Juan José Campanella

Juan José Campanella (born 19 July 1959) is an Argentine television and film director, writer and producer. He achieved worldwide attention with the release of The Secret in Their Eyes (2009), for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Campanella was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He started studying engineering, but dropped out in 1980 after four years at university. He would later remark that the decisive factor for this decision was watching All That Jazz on the very day he was going to apply for a fifth year. His debut as director was in 1979, with the short Prioridad nacional. Campanella traveled to the United States and entered the Tisch School of the Arts. Four years later, in 1984, his second film, Victoria 392, which marked the first of five collaborations with actor friend Eduardo Blanco, as well as his first collaboration with screenwriter Fernando Castets, with whom he co-directed and co-wrote the film. After graduating from NYU film school, Campanella went on to direct two American films: The Boy Who Cried Bitch in 1991 and Love Walked In in 1997.