Biography
Samuel Sebastian is a Spanish filmmaker an playwrighter, son of the painter Ester Rodríguez Ro. History of Art graduate, he got the Extraordinary Award Bachelor and studied a Screenplay Master in the UIMP- Valencia (Spain). He is currently working on his thesis about Independent Cinema Productions in the Digital Era. His work as a filmmaker began in 2005 with the experimental long feature film First silence (El primer silencio, 2006). Since then, he alternates fiction films with social documentaries, videocreations and videoclips. After First Silence, he has made two more long features: The frame of dead (La pausa dels morts, 2011) and The long night of imagination (La larga noche de la imaginación, 2016). He has worked as a writer, producer, director or editor in countries such as Morocco, Syria, United States, France, Switzerland, Uganda, Spain, UK, Guinea, Panama, Cuba or Azerbaijan. Some of these films and documentaries are Over Azerbaijan's sky (2012, Sagrario Perpiñán), Jeunes et prêts à inventer le futur (2012, Nasser Bakhti), The silent revolution (2014, Oriol Messegué and David Marrades), Teachers (2015, Giovanna Ribes), Al Brown (2017, Carlos Aguilar), Da parish (2017, Lila French, Lizzie Prestel) or Good-bye Mr. Marshall (2017, Bebé Pérez), amongst others. As a director, his films have been screened in festivals from all around the world, amongst others: Cusco (Peru); San Diego (USA); La Paz (Bolivia); Bogocine (Colombia); Rosario and Buenos Aires (Argentina); Lisbon (Portugal); Bilbao, Madrid, Seville, Cordoba, Barcelona and Valencia (Spain); Bolonia, Milano, Syracuse and Torino (Italy); Paris (France); Johannesbourg (South Africa); Baghdad (Irak); Melbourne (Australia); Kampala (Uganda); Bodhisattva (India) or Daklah (Morocco). In 2014 he founded a company of production, GAMANprod, focused on international co-productions. Since its foundation, GAMANprod has produced several films and documentaries. As a writer, he was awarded by his short stories The city of light (2005), A winter without Vera (2007) and Lilith's Letters (2011). Besides, he won the October Theatre Prize with his play The Closed Rooms (2008) about child abuse. In 2019 he is working on his upcoming film, The Utopist
