Luis Dantas

Luis started his professional career as a news photographer, having worked for years as staff for VEJA, Brazil's largest weekly news magazine. He moved on to film and received a grant to study at Columbia University in NY for his MFA in writing/directing in the film program. His short Child's Play received the best film award at Columbia University Film Festival and many other awards. In NY he produced the indie Latino feature film Washington Heights, directed by Alfredo de Villa, released by Mac Releasing and Lions Gate. In 2012 he co-wrote,co-directed and produced The Performance a TV feature for TV Cultura in Brazil, the first Brazilian film selected for competition at FIPA in Biarritz. In 2015, If God Comes Let Him Bring a Gun, was released which he wrote, directed and produced, available on Amazon Prime in the US. He has been awarded development funds from the Audiovisual Sector Fund for 3 new projects which have been developed and are in the financing process: Animal Family (he is writer and co-creator of the series, a children's pre-school animated series in co-production with Mono Entretenimento); He who shoots also dies (a 13 episode crime series, as a writer and writing team supervisor); Married to Crime (a feature film about three women escaping from a Brazilian penitentiary, and also winner of IBERMEDIA). His feature script adaptation of Dostoyevsky's White Nights was the recipient of the SPCINE (São Paulo Film Agency) doctoring award.