Meet Bruno Rubeiz of The Valley

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bruno Rubeiz

Hi Bruno, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’ve been in love with cinema since I saw Titanic when I was 4 and it absolutely changed my life. I had never had an emotional experience like that and it became my way into the world of movies. As I got older and I began to understand a little but more about how movies were made I realized I wanted to work with that for a living. After getting my BFA in Film at Emerson College, I moved to New York to pursue an MFA in Directing at Columbia University. Living in New York City and studying film at such an advanced level was incredible. Columbia has an intense program but I learned so much and it really changed the way I think about telling stories as a visual medium. After 6 years in NY, I realized I wanted to move to Los Angeles in search of more work opportunities in the industry.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
In some ways it has been smooth because filmmaking is something that never fails to enchant me, but I would be lying if I said it’s been without challenges. The more you learn about the industry the more it becomes clear just how much of a privilege it is to get an opportunity to direct a movie. Any movie. The industry is also going through perhaps one of its most difficult periods where the aftermath of Covid is still reshaping the way films are made and released. During COVID I had this huge fear that the moviegoing experience might be gone forever and that potential loss was very tough to deal with it. Fortunately, cinema is still alive but nobody really knows what’s it’s going to be like in 5 years.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I like to tell stories that exist right on the edge between reality and fantasy, I guess you could say magical realism, but I don’t want to put myself so squarely inside that box. I think narrative fiction is at its best an act of hope. Human expression can take many beautiful forms but there’s something about film, even films that dwell in realism, where you get to create an experience a different level of reality that is somehow deep down entirely about our own reality. The best works of art for me are the ones that take you somewhere strange and different but somehow lead you to a mirror in a place you never expected to find yourself. That is the kind of feeling that I hope to explore in my own work.

What makes you happy?
Sharing art with people. Whenever I find a song, photograph, performance, book, any piece of art really, that truly strikes a chord inside me, my immediate desire is to show it to someone else in the hope that they might feel the same thing I felt. That bridge between people that only art can create is something that never fails to bring me joy because it’s about the things that makes us human and that remind me we usually a lot more in common than we’d like to think.