بیوگرافی
Gaz Alazraki is the writer and director of Mexico's record-breaking comedy We Are the Nobles (2013) and the Co-Creator, Executive Producer, and Director of Club of Crows (2015), Netflix's first original Spanish-language series. He leads Alazraki Entertainment, a Mexico City-based production company dedicated to producing high-quality entertainment for general audiences in Latin America and the Hispanic market in the USA.
Born and raised in Mexico City, Gary "Gaz" Alazraki attended the American School Foundation there. He spent a year studying in Boston and completed the latter half of his college education at USC. His grandfather was the renowned Mexican filmmaker Benito Alazraki, and his father, Carlos Alazraki Grossman, worked in television for many years before founding his own advertising agency, Alazraki and Associates Advertising, in 1977—the year Gaz was born.
Gaz began his studies in Communications at the Iberoamerican University but, after completing an eight-week summer program at the New York Film Academy, transferred to the USC School of Cinema to pursue a career in film and television.
He gained on-set experience by working on major advertising productions while directing short films independently. Gaz served as Assistant Director to filmmaker and commercial director Alejandro González Padilla, which led to his first opportunity directing commercials for major companies in Mexico.
In 2004, he co-founded the production company Agave Shots with Pitipol Ybarra, under the mentorship of Simón Bross, continuing to direct commercials for the advertising industry.
That year, he directed Volver, volver (2005), his first significant short film, which attracted the attention of rising local stars Jaime Camil, Martha Higareda, Tony Dalton, and Oscar-nominated Palme d'Or winner Guillermo Arriaga. Arriaga invited Gaz to direct La hora cero (2008), a short film he was producing for Terra Films in a project assembled by Lucas Akoskin. This experiment explored how different directors would interpret the same six pages written by Arriaga.
In 2008, Gaz and Pitipol closed Agave Shots, and Gaz began writing the screenplay for We Are the Nobles (2013). The film was released in March 2013, distributed by Warner Bros.
With 650 prints, We Are the Nobles became the largest release ever for a Mexican film. It doubled the record for the highest-grossing Mexican movie, attracting 7.2 million viewers and earning 340 million pesos at the box office, surpassing the record held by The Crime of Padre Amaro (2002) for 11 years.
The film also ranked as the 16th highest-grossing film in Mexican history, stayed in the top 10 box office charts for 17 weeks, won Best Movie from the iTunes Store Mexico, and achieved the highest home video sales in Mexican history, outperforming Hollywood titles.
Gaz reunited with Luis Gerardo Méndez to create Club of Crows (2015), an original concept he co-created with Michael Lam. Netflix acquired the pitch in 2014 to produce its first Spanish-language original series made in Mexico for a global audience. The first season consists of 13 episodes, 12 of which Gaz directed and edited.
