Sebastian Silva

Sebastián

Silva is a Chilean director, screenwriter, painter and musician.

After

graduating from the Catholic Colegio del Verbo Divino school in Santiago, he

spent a year studying filmmaking at the Escuela de Cine de Chile before leaving

to study animation in Montreal, Canada. Here, he mounted the first gallery

exhibition of his illustrations and started the band CHC, which went on to

record three albums.

Back in

Chile, Silva recorded a solo album, Iwannawin & Friends and directed his

debut feature, "La Vida Me Mata", Released in 2007 by Chilean

production company Fabula, "La Vida Me Mata" went on to win Best Film

at the Chilean Pedro Sienna Awards in 2008.

In February

2008, setting aside a script based on his trip to Hollywood, Silva wrote (with

Pedro Peirano) and directed his next film: "The Maid". The film,

released in 2009, told the story of a maid trying to keep her job after having

served a family for 23 years. It has won multiple awards, including the Grand

Jury Prize - World Cinema Dramatic at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and was

nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Golden Globes Awards and

the 2010 NAACP Image Awards. Film critic David Parkinson called the film

"an exceptional study of the emotional investment that domestics make in

the families they serve." Silva

partnered with Pedro Peirano again to write his next film, "Old Cats",

which premiered in 2010 at the Valdivia International Film Festival in Chile

and at the New York Film Festival in the United States. He then made his TV

debut in 2012 when he wrote, directed and produced the HBO short-form TV comedy

show The Boring Life of Jacqueline.

The success

of The Maid took Silva to Sundance again in 2013 to premiere two new films, "Magic

Magic " and "Crystal Fairy", both starring indie actor Michael

Cera. Silva won the Sundance Directing Award: World Cinema - Dramatic for "Crystal

Fairy" and the LA Times described "Magic Magic" as “an

exploration of insanity, selfishness and emotional brutality.” Silva told the

LA Times that Cera's character in "Magic Magic" is "one of my

favorite characters I've created in a movie."