About
Juan Paulo Laserna
Biography
Juan Paulo Laserna is an award-winning Colombian screenwriter, director, and producer whose work blends magical realism, dark humor, and emotionally grounded drama.
He received his BFA with honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he was mentored by four-time Academy Award winner Chris Newman and received the Rhodes Family Award for Excellence in Film. As his thesis, he wrote, directed, and produced his debut feature, Las Malas Lenguas, a coming-of-age story that premiered internationally at the LA Film Festival, screened at IndieBo and the Colombian Film Festival in New York, and was released theatrically by CineColombia before being acquired by Caracol TV and STARZ.
Laserna earned his MFA in Film Directing and TV Writing from Columbia University, graduating with honors and receiving the CUFF Thesis Jury distinction. There, he was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Screenplay Award, as well as the Katharina Otto-Bernstein Mentorship Prize for his thesis film Not My Name. The short went on to win the Focus Features Award for Social and Cultural Impact and screen at Bogoshorts, Mill Valley, and Urban Film Festival.
His other short films include Wolf at the Door, winner of Best Short Film at the Ibero-American Film Festival, and Nobody’s Fool, which premiered at the Colombian Film Festival in New York.
Laserna is a Film Independent Screenwriting fellow, a Cine Qua Non Screenwriting resident, and a Nipkow Screenwriting Residence fellow. His projects have also been supported by the Film Independent Producing Lab, Fantasolab, the Producers Guild of America’s Create Lab, Film Independent’s Fast Track Finance Market, San Sebastián Film Festival’s Meet Them, and BAM Projects.
He worked alongside Alex García López on the Netflix and Dynamo adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, contributing to script development and creative coordination. He is currently Head of Development at Amalobo Media in Mexico City, where he focuses on original films and international co-productions.
I want to make films with the reach of popular cinema and the depth to leave audiences seeing the world differently.
Creative partnership
Stories built together.
For more than five years, Juan Paulo has developed a Latin American slate with producer Valeria Contreras. Their partnership begins at the story level and continues through financing, international partnerships, and production, combining Laserna’s character-driven filmmaking with Contreras’s cross-border producing strategy.
Together, they are building culturally specific films from Colombia, Mexico, and the United States with the ambition to reach audiences worldwide.
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