Amat Escalante
Amat Escalante (born 28 February 1979) is a Spanish and Mexican film director, producer and screenwriter. He is most well known for directing the controversial Mexican crime thriller Heli for which he was awarded the best director prize award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, and for directing the 2016 Mexican drama The Untamed for which he received the Silver Lion for best director at the 2016 Venice Film Festival.
Amat Escalante

Canal22 · Festival de Cine de Cannes 2023 con Jean-Christophe Berjon | Capítulo 3 · CC BY 3.0
- Name
- Amat Escalante
- Born
- 28 February 1979
- Birthplace
- Barcelona, Spain
- Occupation
- Film director, producer and screenwriter
- Nationality
- Spain and Mexico.
- Education
- Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión.
- Honours
- Silver Lion.
- Languages
- Spanish.
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Documentary summary
Amat Escalante (born 28 February 1979) is a Spanish and Mexican film director, producer and screenwriter. He is most well known for directing the controversial Mexican crime thriller Heli for which he was awarded the best director prize award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, and for directing the 2016 Mexican drama The Untamed for which he received the Silver Lion for best director at the 2016 Venice Film Festival.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q4532710 · wikipedia · Amat Escalante
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Amat Escalante • Born — 28 February 1979 • Birthplace — Barcelona, Spain • Citizenship — * Spain • Mexico • Years Active — 2002–present • Occupation — Film director, producer and screenwriter
Biography
Biography
Escalante was incidentally born in Barcelona, Spain while his parents — a Mexican father and an American mother — had been living in Norway. He spent most of his early years in Guanajuato, Mexico, but moved to Spain in 2001 to study film editing and sound at the Center for Cinematographic Studies of Catalonia (Centre d'Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya, CECC) and apply for Spanish citizenship; which he failed to secure. After his stint in Barcelona, he joined the International School of Film and Television (EICTV) in Havana, Cuba an institution founded by Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez, Fernando Birri and the Julio García Espinosa "to support the development of national audio-visual industries" in non-aligned countries. Back in Mexico, he directed a short film (Amarrados, 2002) that received an award at the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival. He worked as an assistant of Carlos Reygadas in Batalla en el cielo (2005), which entered the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. During the filming of the movie, both became close friends, and Reygadas ended up co-producing some of Escalante's first films. One of those films, Sangre (2005), filmed in November 2004 with a budget of US$60,000, was included in Un Certain Regard (a section of the same festival) and in both Rotterdam and San Sebastián. • Illustration — Amat Escalante (center) with Andrea Vergara (left) and Armando Espitia (right) in 2013 His film Heli was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and was awarded the prize for Best Director by a jury presided by U.S. film director Steven Spielberg. In 2016, his film The Untamed was selected to compete in the 73rd Venice International Film Festival. Escalante won the Silver Lion for Best Direction for his film.
Filmography
Filmography
• Amarrados (2002), producer • The Legend of Pete Jones (2005), cinematographer • Sangre (2005), director, producer, screenwriter, For which he won the "Film Critics and Press Award" • Los bastardos (2008), director, producer, screenwriter • Heli (2013), director, associate producer, screenwriter • The Untamed (2016), director, producer, screenwriter • Narcos: Mexico (2020), director • Lost in the Night (2023), director
Identity
Identity
Amat Escalante is recorded with the occupation assistant director. Recorded with the occupation film producer. Recorded as screenwriter, film producer and director.

Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante
Galería de Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara

Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante, during a presentation of his 2005 film "Sangre" at the Cine Tonalá in Tijuana, Mexico
Jaespinoza
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1979
Amat Escalante was born on 28 February 1979.
2002
Carlos Reygadas - Japón (2002) - Filmmaker - Interview by Amat Escalante (2019) is digitised and catalogued by Internet Archive.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Guanajuato.
Residences
Barcelona.
Birth place
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q4532710: Amat Escalante
Reputable secondary · Wikidata
- “Amat Escalante”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
scholarly publication
- Lo monstruoso y lo invisible. La región salvaje (Amat Escalante, 2016) y la genealogía cívico-rural de la violencia en México, Revista 180, 2024
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2024
Citations
References
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scholarly publication
Lo monstruoso y lo invisible. La región salvaje (Amat Escalante, 2016) y la genealogía cívico-rural de la violencia en México, Revista 180, 2024Crossref registry
Verifiedreference work
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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