Meet Bruno Rubeiz | Screenwriter and Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Bruno Rubeiz and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Bruno, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I had a writing professor at Columbia University who said that writers were readers who were moved to creation. I think that’s the simplest and truest explanation for why someone chooses an artistic career. I’ve had some pretty tremendous emotional experiences watching films, from many different genres, and it was almost a no-brainer that I would pursue filmmaking as a professional career. It’s an attempt to somehow give back what was given to me by some very talented filmmakers. Now, watching movies and making movies are two very different experiences, but my constant north star whenever I’m at a creative or personal roadblock is to go back to those artistic touchstones that really left an effect on me. Most of the times they’re films, but they have been songs, albums, or even pictures at times.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I like to think my art, when it works, as a marriage of humanist and fantastical principles. I love genre but it’s nothing if it’s not connected to some human emotion or experience. What I always try to do whenever I’m coming up with my next project is to take one small step out of reality but to always bring my experience as a human being, the good and the bad. I really like E.M Forster’s quote of “A humanist has four leading characteristics – curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.” I often go back to that quote if I find I’m getting lost in the weeds of a story, His other quote that I think also answers the other part of your question is “only connect”. I bring that up because one of the biggest challenges I had to overcome is to learn how to get a story so outside of my own head that it is fully accessible to someone who has never met me. That’s why I bring humanism so much, because if a story doesn’t have a kernel of humanity in it that an audience member can connect to, it’s always gonna fall flat, no matter how complicated the plot or genre mechanics are.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
It might be obvious and very film nerdy of me but I’m gonna go with the Academy Museum. If you’re visiting Los Angeles, you gotta have some cinema-related activities. Skip the Walk of Fame, Dolby Theatre, Chinese Theater, all of those are gonna be disappointing, but the Academy Museum captures the glamour and craft of filmmaking in a really pure way. It’s impossible not to fall in love with the art of filmmaking inside those walls.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would definitely say Eric Mendelsohn, he’s a directing professor at Columbia University as well as an award-winning film director. During my very first class at the Columbia MFA film program, he kicked things off by breaking down the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are and how author Maurice Sendak was really telling the story through the framing of the illustrations. It was profound and simple, and his explanation was so deeply rooted in how the emotion of the story was being conveyed through the technique, by the end I was in tears. It was the perfect encapsulation of why great art moves us so much, it’s human expression coming through a beautiful command of craft.