René Guerra was born in Northeast of Brazil. He first started doing amateur theater in 1992 and in 1997 he directed his first professional play. After an internship in an experimental theater called La Mama Experimental Theater in New York, he decided to go back to Brazil to study Cinema. His first short film The Shoes of Aristeu (2009), about the funeral of a transvestite who is being buried as a man, participated in more than 60 festivals throughout the world and was awarded 36 times. The film participated in the 31st Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, the International Short Film Festival of São Paulo, among others, and was the Brazilian representative in the Academy Awards® selection. The film also won the biggest prize for short films in Brazil: the Great Canal Brasil Award. His other short Home was part of the Fucking Different São Paulo project and was screened at the 60th Berlinale in 2010. In 2012, René directed a documentary called Who’s Afraid of Cris Negão?, as an important study on the transvestite world, part of the research for Lily and the Dragonflies. The feature has already participated in four project development labs: BrLab (Brazil), Taller Colón - Fundación Typa (Argentina), IFFR Rotterdam Lab (Holland) and most recently the EAVE Puentes Australab (Uruguay, Chile), winning a prize of post-production services. In 2013, it was selected to the Torino Film Lab.
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