CLAUDIA LLOSA

Peruvian film director Claudia Llosa was born in Lima on 15th November 1976. She is also a writer and producer. After her studies in Newton College, she completed her degree in communication studies at the University of Lima. She is the niece of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa and the film director Luis Llosa. At the end of the 1990s, she moved to Madrid, Spain. From 1998 to 2001 she studied at the film academy Escuela TAI, and at the end of her studies she started working on the script for Madeinusa. Her career started in advertising, for which she moved to Barcelona, but kept working to give life to her films. Madeinusa enjoyed its premiere in competition at Sundance Festival 2006, won the prize for the best unpublished script at the 2003 Havana Film Festival and several international awards, including the FIPRESCI international critics award at Rotterdam Festival and the Best Latin American Film Award at Malaga Festival, among others. In 2009, Llosa finished her second film The Milk of Sorrow (La teta asustada) which was shortlisted for the 59th Berlin International Film Festival. It was the first Peruvian film nominated for the Golden Bear award, and won the main award. On February 2, 2010 Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow was nominated for the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film Category. Also in 2010, Claudia Llosa was invited to become a member of Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2012 Claudia Llosa's short Loxoro, produced by the Oscar winner Juan José Campanella was shortlisted for the Berlin International Film Festival. Loxoro won the Teddy Award in the category of Best Short Film. Her 2014 film Aloft had its premiere in the competition section of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival.
Regarding how she prepares for films and visualizes shots, she says, “I usually work on a very detailed visual treatment before I start preproduction. This includes all concepts: color, framing, rhythm, visual storyboard (very simple drawings done by myself of key scenes.) I am usually not driven by characters. I save all kinds of photo references during the writing process and then make a kind of sketch diary for each scene. I also write down all the analysis for directing actors on that same album-dictionary, as I like to call it. The goal is to remember ideas, atmospheres, and directions and save them like a bible during shooting. But the funny thing is that while I'm shooting I never open it. I really don't need to, because I had memorized all the ideas that I really love, and the ones that I don't remember, I just let them go. I need this as a safety net, I suppose. In the case of The Milk of Sorrow I must say that I had and amazing crew, we all ended up improving ourselves because of this synergy. That's very important.”

FILMOGRAPHY
2006: Madeinusa
2009: The milk of sorrow
2010: El niño pepita
2012: Loxoro
2014: Aloft