Biography

LEONARDO PIRONDI (b. São Paulo, Brazil, 1999) is a Brazilian-Portuguese filmmaker and artist. His films create and inhabit alternate worlds that blur the lines between reality and fiction, challenging conventional storytelling structures. Pirondi's films have screened internationally at festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Tiger Short Competition in Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Viennale, Slamdance, Mar del Plata, IndieLisboa, FICUNAM, BFI London, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Oberhausen, and Media City among others. His work has been presented in art centers such as the Museum of Modern Art Rio de Janeiro, CCCB in Spain, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and REDCAT. He has had solo shows at Galeria Mola in Portugal and Spectacle Theater in NYC. Some of his films live in the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, UCLA Film & Television Archive collection, James Baldwin Library at MacDowell, and The Film-Makers' Coop. in New York City. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in film from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2025, is a Sundance Institute Fellow, and was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in 2025. His work has been featured in publications such as ARTFORUM, Filmmaker Magazine, MUBI Notebook, Senses of Cinema, Talking Shorts, and InReview Online. His short and feature films have been supported by the Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual of Portugal (ICA), the Locarno Residency, Projeto Paradiso, the Allan Sekula Social Documentary Fund, San Diego Underground Arts, and the Tim Disney Prize for Excellence in the Storytelling Arts. He is a programmer for the Climate Film Festival NYC and is part of the board of directors and selection committee for Badam Film and its film development fund.