
Francisco J. Lombardi
Directing
Biography
Francisco J. Lombardi is one of the most renowned filmmakers in Latin America. Throughout his career, he has directed 17 feature films, and his work has been the subject of retrospectives and tributes at major festivals such as Fribourg, Mar del Plata, Guadalajara, Havana, Huesca, Viña del Mar, and Trieste. Lombardi has received numerous international awards, including two Silver Shells for Best Director at the San Sebastián International Film Festival (The City and the Dogs, Under the Skin) and the Grand Prix des Amériques at the Montreal World Film Festival (Fallen from Heaven). His films have also been selected by top-tier festivals such as Cannes (The City and the Dogs, Without Compassion), Toronto (What the Eye Doesn’t See, Fallen from Heaven), and Berlin (The Mouth of the Wolf, Captain Pantoja and the Special Services), among many others. In 2014, he received the National Culture Award of Peru, the highest distinction in the country’s cultural sphere. Other major honors include the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award from Human Rights Watch for his exceptional commitment to human rights, and the Pablo Neruda Gold Medal of Merit, awarded by Chile’s National Council for Culture and the Arts in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Latin American art and culture. In 2023, he was among the 398 individuals invited to join the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars.
Known For

No description available.
Love at First Sight

Based on the alleged autobiography of gay peruvian talk show host Jaime Bailey. Joaquin, a young man from the high class of Lima, deals with problems concerning his sexual identity as a child, then as a teenager pressured by his macho snobbish father, then as an independent lazy pot-smoking college student, and later as a cocaine addict in Lima and Miami.
Don't Tell Anyone

Peru, early 2000s. Alfonso wants to be a writer, but he decides to work first as a journalist. He is assigned to the crime section of a newspaper, a job from which he can know the nasty guts of tabloid publications.
Red Ink

The Peruvian army captain Pantaleon Pantoja, a very serious and efficient officer, is chosen by his superiors to set up a special service of 'visitors' to satisfy the sexual needs of the soldiers posted on remote jungle outposts.
Captain Pantoja and the Special Services

The linking of three characters in a kind of mutual deceit. Different points of view, attitudes and a look at relationships marked by social and cultural differences.
Dos Besos

Four stories taking place in Lima, Peru in the 70s.
Cuentos inmorales

An ambitious black comedy that tells three loosely related stories: a couple of elderly landowners, laid low by economic conditions and reformist politics, are trying to gather enough money to build themselves a marble tomb that would keep their remains in the style to which they still aspire; they give their now blind former housekeeper a pig that proves to be more trouble than it's worth as the effort to fatten it up destroys what little family the woman has; and one of the couple's tenants, who is presenter of a relentlessly optimistic radio self-help show, tries to put his own counsel into effect when he saves a young woman from suicide.
Fallen from Heaven

Ramón, a psychologically unstable university student from Lima, murders his landlords, who constantly demanded the payment of the monthly rent for the hovel in which he lives. From here, remorse and the fear of being arrested will eat you inside.
Sin compasión

Passion, criminal instincts and traditions melt together in this film that shakes our understanding of crime.
Under the Skin

Through out six different and yet parallel stories that take place during the corrupted goverment during the 90s in Peru, Lombardi tells the moral decomposition that ran through all classes and generations of the peruvian society.
What the Eye Doesn't See

In an abandoned glass factory, a woman exploits her workers, all of them mentally ill. A gang of young assailants decides to rob said factory, but in order to achieve that, they must get one of them into the woman's house first. What they do know is that Maruja, the woman's goddaughter also lives there.
Maruja en el infierno

Four angry cadets have formed an inner circle in an attempt to beat the system and ward off the boredom and stifling confinement of the military academy, set off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder.
The City and the Dogs

A Peruvian schoolteacher conspires with a journalist to assassinate the official responsible for her fiancé's murder.
Black Butterfly

The Capitan Burdeles invites three longtime friends, Coraza, Doctore and El Negro, to the meeting for drinks and card games that are usually held on Saturdays. While they wait for him, they receive a call from El Negro who has had a fight in a hostel with his ex-partner, Mariana. The friends go to the place and manage to transfer Mariana, who has lost consciousness, to the meeting place. They play games and make drinks while they wait for him to recover. But this does not happen and they will soon find themselves in the alternative of having to get rid of a body that has become apparent evidence of a crime. During the long night the ghosts of sexism, frustration and imposture so characteristic in certain social sectors of our culture will appear.
A Naked Body

The military anti-terrorist army takes control of "Chuspi", an unknown and faraway small village, isolated by the terrorist group "Sendero Luminoso" (Shining Path). A soldier called Vitin Luna, and other young soldiers face an invisible, perhaps superior force. Their unit is commanded by a brutal lieutenant who declares the entire village guilty of treason. In the face of this crisis, Vitin must choose between blind obedience and his own conscience.
The Mouth of the Wolf

Profile of the painter Victor Humareda (1920-1986) in his daily life in the marginal neighborhoods of Lima.
Retrato de Humareda Pintor

In this short, the main character, who calls himself San Juaneco comes across a fugitive from Lima in the outskirts of the city. Convinced that he must rid the man of demons to found the City of Good, he ties the fugitive to a cross.
Carta del apóstol San Juaneco a la ciudad del mal

Amelia is a young nursing assistant who finds herself without a job; her friend Cecilia proposes that she replace her in the care of an elderly millionaire who is looking for a person to help him.
La decisión de Amelia

Inspired by actual events, the film follows Aquiles, an Amazonian boy abducted by the terrorist group Shining Path. Through his testimony, we witness his journey from victim to fighter and his desperate attempt to escape. A raw and intimate look at indoctrination, violence, and survival, the film reconstructs his struggle for identity and freedom.
Heart of the Wolf

Ella – well she has a name too – Luna (Patricia Garza), is actually about her much older husband and painter Alfredo (Paul Vega), and his choice of actions/reactions after she decides to leave him for a lover that he wasn’t aware of. Alberto has been going through a creative crisis and is under pressure to complete a series of paintings for a forthcoming show. It is nevertheless also plain to see that he’d been treating Luna, who’s also his model, largely as an object of desire and obsession – capturing with camera her every movement in the house when she’s not posing for him, and memorising her every physical feature, moles and warts included – he’d apparently counted twenty seven moles on her body. When Alfredo tracks down and entraps the lover she’d wanted to elope with (Rómulo Assereto), he’ll discover that they both have more in common than merely desiring the same woman…