Francisco J. Lombardi

Directing

Francisco J. Lombardi

Born 1947-08-03 · Tacna, Peru

Francisco J. Lombardi is one of the most renowned filmmakers in Latin America. Throughout his career, he has directed 17 feature films, and his work has been the subject of retrospectives and tributes at major festivals such as Fribourg, Mar del Plata, Guadalajara, Havana, Huesca, Viña del Mar, and Trieste. Lombardi has received numerous international awards, including two Silver Shells for Best Director at the San Sebastián International Film Festival (The City and the Dogs, Under the Skin) and the Grand Prix des Amériques at the Montreal World Film Festival (Fallen from Heaven). His films have also been selected by top-tier festivals such as Cannes (The City and the Dogs, Without Compassion), Toronto (What the Eye Doesn’t See, Fallen from Heaven), and Berlin (The Mouth of the Wolf, Captain Pantoja and the Special Services), among many others. In 2014, he received the National Culture Award of Peru, the highest distinction in the country’s cultural sphere. Other major honors include the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award from Human Rights Watch for his exceptional commitment to human rights, and the Pablo Neruda Gold Medal of Merit, awarded by Chile’s National Council for Culture and the Arts in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Latin American art and culture. In 2023, he was among the 398 individuals invited to join the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Cuentos inmorales poster
3.7

Four stories taking place in Lima, Peru in the 70s.

Cuentos inmorales

1978

Black Butterfly poster
5.4

A Peruvian schoolteacher conspires with a journalist to assassinate the official responsible for her fiancé's murder.

Black Butterfly

2006

Callejón Oscuro poster
NR

A violent blind man wanders through the center of Lima, upon entering a restaurant he causes an incident with the public and the employees.

Callejón Oscuro

1983

Callejón Oscuro poster
NR

A violent blind man wanders through the center of Lima, upon entering a restaurant he causes an incident with the public and the employees.

Callejón Oscuro

1983

Captain Pantoja and the Special Services poster
7.2

The Peruvian army captain Pantaleon Pantoja, a very serious and efficient officer, is chosen by his superiors to set up a special service of 'visitors' to satisfy the sexual needs of the soldiers posted on remote jungle outposts.

Captain Pantoja and the Special Services

1999

Ella poster
3.5

Ella – well she has a name too – Luna (Patricia Garza), is actually about her much older husband and painter Alfredo (Paul Vega), and his choice of actions/reactions after she decides to leave him for a lover that he wasn’t aware of. Alberto has been going through a creative crisis and is under pressure to complete a series of paintings for a forthcoming show. It is nevertheless also plain to see that he’d been treating Luna, who’s also his model, largely as an object of desire and obsession – capturing with camera her every movement in the house when she’s not posing for him, and memorising her every physical feature, moles and warts included – he’d apparently counted twenty seven moles on her body. When Alfredo tracks down and entraps the lover she’d wanted to elope with (Rómulo Assereto), he’ll discover that they both have more in common than merely desiring the same woman…

Ella

2010

Heart of the Wolf poster
7.0

Inspired by actual events, the film follows Aquiles, an Amazonian boy abducted by the terrorist group Shining Path. Through his testimony, we witness his journey from victim to fighter and his desperate attempt to escape. A raw and intimate look at indoctrination, violence, and survival, the film reconstructs his struggle for identity and freedom.

Heart of the Wolf

2025

Heart of the Wolf poster
7.0

Inspired by actual events, the film follows Aquiles, an Amazonian boy abducted by the terrorist group Shining Path. Through his testimony, we witness his journey from victim to fighter and his desperate attempt to escape. A raw and intimate look at indoctrination, violence, and survival, the film reconstructs his struggle for identity and freedom.

Heart of the Wolf

2025

No artwork available
NR

Short film.

Luz en Tus Ojos

1976

Don't Tell Anyone poster
6.0

Based on the alleged autobiography of gay peruvian talk show host Jaime Bailey. Joaquin, a young man from the high class of Lima, deals with problems concerning his sexual identity as a child, then as a teenager pressured by his macho snobbish father, then as an independent lazy pot-smoking college student, and later as a cocaine addict in Lima and Miami.

Don't Tell Anyone

1998

Fallen from Heaven poster
6.0

An ambitious black comedy that tells three loosely related stories: a couple of elderly landowners, laid low by economic conditions and reformist politics, are trying to gather enough money to build themselves a marble tomb that would keep their remains in the style to which they still aspire; they give their now blind former housekeeper a pig that proves to be more trouble than it's worth as the effort to fatten it up destroys what little family the woman has; and one of the couple's tenants, who is presenter of a relentlessly optimistic radio self-help show, tries to put his own counsel into effect when he saves a young woman from suicide.

Fallen from Heaven

1990

Fallen from Heaven poster
6.0

An ambitious black comedy that tells three loosely related stories: a couple of elderly landowners, laid low by economic conditions and reformist politics, are trying to gather enough money to build themselves a marble tomb that would keep their remains in the style to which they still aspire; they give their now blind former housekeeper a pig that proves to be more trouble than it's worth as the effort to fatten it up destroys what little family the woman has; and one of the couple's tenants, who is presenter of a relentlessly optimistic radio self-help show, tries to put his own counsel into effect when he saves a young woman from suicide.

Fallen from Heaven

1990

No artwork available
NR

The Chamber Theatre group and their performance of the Greek classic Medea, directed by Alfonso Santistevan. The challenges of producing theatre in Peru.

Medea, una puesta en escena

1983

No artwork available
NR

The Chamber Theatre group and their performance of the Greek classic Medea, directed by Alfonso Santistevan. The challenges of producing theatre in Peru.

Medea, una puesta en escena

1983

Maruja en el infierno poster
7.0

In an abandoned glass factory, a woman exploits her workers, all of them mentally ill. A gang of young assailants decides to rob said factory, but in order to achieve that, they must get one of them into the woman's house first. What they do know is that Maruja, the woman's goddaughter also lives there.

Maruja en el infierno

1983

Cautivos poster
NR

The story is divided into two chapters. The murder of a teenager brings together two police officers. Their differences and the religious obsession of the younger one open a conflict apart from the investigation. The second episode follows the search for a businessman, Andrade, who suffers from a deadly virus with no cure. Desperate, Andrade seeks out Belisario, who puts him in contact with a suspicious doctor. The latter promises a miraculous cure with human fetuses. The plot raises how the tragic fate of the teenager crosses and connects these divided worlds. He ends up being cannibalized, constructing a cruel metaphor with obvious social resonances.

Cautivos

Baño de Mujeres poster
NR

Short film directed by Augusto Tamayo, restored by Emilio Moscoso with the support of the Audiovisual Direction, Phonography and New Media - DAFO. Women of different ages meet in the bathroom of a nightclub and make intimate revelations.

Baño de Mujeres

1992

Red Ink poster
6.7

Peru, early 2000s. Alfonso wants to be a writer, but he decides to work first as a journalist. He is assigned to the crime section of a newspaper, a job from which he can know the nasty guts of tabloid publications.

Red Ink

2000

Sin compasión poster
5.2

Ramón, a psychologically unstable university student from Lima, murders his landlords, who constantly demanded the payment of the monthly rent for the hovel in which he lives. From here, remorse and the fear of being arrested will eat you inside.

Sin compasión

1994

Sin compasión poster
5.2

Ramón, a psychologically unstable university student from Lima, murders his landlords, who constantly demanded the payment of the monthly rent for the hovel in which he lives. From here, remorse and the fear of being arrested will eat you inside.

Sin compasión

1994

The City and the Dogs poster
7.8

Four angry cadets have formed an inner circle in an attempt to beat the system and ward off the boredom and stifling confinement of the military academy, set off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder.

The City and the Dogs

1985

The City and the Dogs poster
7.8

Four angry cadets have formed an inner circle in an attempt to beat the system and ward off the boredom and stifling confinement of the military academy, set off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder.

The City and the Dogs

1985

Under the Skin poster
5.6

Passion, criminal instincts and traditions melt together in this film that shakes our understanding of crime.

Under the Skin

1996

Dos Besos poster
6.4

The linking of three characters in a kind of mutual deceit. Different points of view, attitudes and a look at relationships marked by social and cultural differences.

Dos Besos

2015