Daniel Jacoby

Directing

Daniel Jacoby

Born

1985-05-31 (41)

Place of birth

Lima, Peru

Known for

Directing

Credits

17 titles

Daniel Jacoby (1985; Lima, Peru) is a visual artist and filmmaker. His interest in the human condition has lead him to eccentric characters, places and stories, which he strives to approach from inventively tangential points of view. With a recurring use of abstraction, the result tends to be a personal and subjective exploration of topics like outsiderness, belonging, loneliness, friendship, desire and spirituality. His films have won awards at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Videoex, Filmadrid, Curtocircuito and Lima Independiente, and have been screened at MoMA Doc Fortnight, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Les Rencontres Internationales, e-flux Screening Room, EMAF, Kurzfilmtage Oberhause…

Known for

Jagata poster
NR

Somewhere in the middle of Hokkaido, lives a man with an inexplicable bond to a potato. Unwilling to be found yet at the same time yearning to reach out, the enigmatic story of his proximity to a root plant is told through the few unaddressed letters he decides to send out. The film captures moments from Daniel Jacoby’s journey through the Northernmost island of Japan in search of this secluded man. Images of unrelated landscapes, situations and objects that the artist encounters in the way acquire an otherworldly aura when presented in the context of the potato-man.

Jagata

2016

Mountain Plain Mountain poster
NR

Deepening confusion becomes a delightful experience watching this collaborative film by Daniel Jacoby and Araki Yu. The documentary observes the idiosyncratic sounds and rhythms of Ban’ei, a rare kind of draft horse race that takes place only in Obihiro, Japan. Capturing the behind-the-scenes operations of the race, the film gradually twists itself into a knot as the excited voices of the commentators merge into a frenzy of gibberish.

Mountain Plain Mountain

2018

Gallinazo poster
NR

The director returns to an exclusive Lima beach club in three moments of his life, each visit revealing new contradictions beneath its unchanging surface. Centuries earlier, a European naturalist collapses on the same shore and is visited by the vulture he has just reclassified. What happens on that shore exposes a bias that will outlast them both.

Gallinazo

2026

Ahold of Get the Things To poster
NR

In a monotonous future where beings have lived all possible lives, "there's a whale, there's a tortoise, there's a parrot." A climbing gym serves as the futuristic scenario for two boys and one girl to wander around while they discuss diverse ideas about the dystopian world they’re trapped in. By speaking in allegorical terms, they avoid addressing their dreadful condition directly. Only one character is different - liberated from such condition. Their love affairs will start to permeate their points of view. The fiction of a movie they’re discussing will blend with their own story. In a world where people live forever, certain things won’t be possible: "there's a novelty, there's a lie, there's a death."

Ahold of Get the Things To

2014

315 poster
NR

A sequence of family anecdotes and historical events coinciding with the artist's date of birth takes on a different tone as he unearths what happened in his native Peru on that specific day in 1989. The monotonous pattern of facts pertaining to the 31st of May suddenly begins to unveil connections to notions of oppressive masculinity, the nuanced tactics employed by imperialist forces, and a neoliberal dream that facilitated the neglect of an important episode in Peruvian history.

315

2023

Nehemías poster
NR

An atmospheric portrait of Christian, a young man from the city who finds himself an outsider in his new home, a poor village called Cocachimba in the jungle of Peru. Fragments from colourful Cubist paintings playfully interrupt the image while the camera shows nature in ever-flowing motion. Sitting on a rock, Christian philosophises about his newfound situation and recalls being visited by a mythical ‘devil’ in the dark of the nigh

Nehemías

2019

Film credits

Behind the camera

Jagata poster
NR

Somewhere in the middle of Hokkaido, lives a man with an inexplicable bond to a potato. Unwilling to be found yet at the same time yearning to reach out, the enigmatic story of his proximity to a root plant is told through the few unaddressed letters he decides to send out. The film captures moments from Daniel Jacoby’s journey through the Northernmost island of Japan in search of this secluded man. Images of unrelated landscapes, situations and objects that the artist encounters in the way acquire an otherworldly aura when presented in the context of the potato-man.

Jagata

2016

Jagata poster
NR

Somewhere in the middle of Hokkaido, lives a man with an inexplicable bond to a potato. Unwilling to be found yet at the same time yearning to reach out, the enigmatic story of his proximity to a root plant is told through the few unaddressed letters he decides to send out. The film captures moments from Daniel Jacoby’s journey through the Northernmost island of Japan in search of this secluded man. Images of unrelated landscapes, situations and objects that the artist encounters in the way acquire an otherworldly aura when presented in the context of the potato-man.

Jagata

2016

Mountain Plain Mountain poster
NR

Deepening confusion becomes a delightful experience watching this collaborative film by Daniel Jacoby and Araki Yu. The documentary observes the idiosyncratic sounds and rhythms of Ban’ei, a rare kind of draft horse race that takes place only in Obihiro, Japan. Capturing the behind-the-scenes operations of the race, the film gradually twists itself into a knot as the excited voices of the commentators merge into a frenzy of gibberish.

Mountain Plain Mountain

2018

Gallinazo poster
NR

The director returns to an exclusive Lima beach club in three moments of his life, each visit revealing new contradictions beneath its unchanging surface. Centuries earlier, a European naturalist collapses on the same shore and is visited by the vulture he has just reclassified. What happens on that shore exposes a bias that will outlast them both.

Gallinazo

2026

Gallinazo poster
NR

The director returns to an exclusive Lima beach club in three moments of his life, each visit revealing new contradictions beneath its unchanging surface. Centuries earlier, a European naturalist collapses on the same shore and is visited by the vulture he has just reclassified. What happens on that shore exposes a bias that will outlast them both.

Gallinazo

2026

Ahold of Get the Things To poster
NR

In a monotonous future where beings have lived all possible lives, "there's a whale, there's a tortoise, there's a parrot." A climbing gym serves as the futuristic scenario for two boys and one girl to wander around while they discuss diverse ideas about the dystopian world they’re trapped in. By speaking in allegorical terms, they avoid addressing their dreadful condition directly. Only one character is different - liberated from such condition. Their love affairs will start to permeate their points of view. The fiction of a movie they’re discussing will blend with their own story. In a world where people live forever, certain things won’t be possible: "there's a novelty, there's a lie, there's a death."

Ahold of Get the Things To

2014

Ahold of Get the Things To poster
NR

In a monotonous future where beings have lived all possible lives, "there's a whale, there's a tortoise, there's a parrot." A climbing gym serves as the futuristic scenario for two boys and one girl to wander around while they discuss diverse ideas about the dystopian world they’re trapped in. By speaking in allegorical terms, they avoid addressing their dreadful condition directly. Only one character is different - liberated from such condition. Their love affairs will start to permeate their points of view. The fiction of a movie they’re discussing will blend with their own story. In a world where people live forever, certain things won’t be possible: "there's a novelty, there's a lie, there's a death."

Ahold of Get the Things To

2014

315 poster
NR

A sequence of family anecdotes and historical events coinciding with the artist's date of birth takes on a different tone as he unearths what happened in his native Peru on that specific day in 1989. The monotonous pattern of facts pertaining to the 31st of May suddenly begins to unveil connections to notions of oppressive masculinity, the nuanced tactics employed by imperialist forces, and a neoliberal dream that facilitated the neglect of an important episode in Peruvian history.

315

2023

315 poster
NR

A sequence of family anecdotes and historical events coinciding with the artist's date of birth takes on a different tone as he unearths what happened in his native Peru on that specific day in 1989. The monotonous pattern of facts pertaining to the 31st of May suddenly begins to unveil connections to notions of oppressive masculinity, the nuanced tactics employed by imperialist forces, and a neoliberal dream that facilitated the neglect of an important episode in Peruvian history.

315

2023

Nehemías poster
NR

An atmospheric portrait of Christian, a young man from the city who finds himself an outsider in his new home, a poor village called Cocachimba in the jungle of Peru. Fragments from colourful Cubist paintings playfully interrupt the image while the camera shows nature in ever-flowing motion. Sitting on a rock, Christian philosophises about his newfound situation and recalls being visited by a mythical ‘devil’ in the dark of the nigh

Nehemías

2019

No One Cried poster
NR

From plain white walls to bombastically crafted backdrops: adult chat rooms are portals to people’s fantasy worlds. Focusing on the moments when the performers are off-screen, a meticulous concatenation of ghostly spaces takes us on an unsettling journey of self-expression and lonesome desire.

No One Cried

2021

No One Cried poster
NR

From plain white walls to bombastically crafted backdrops: adult chat rooms are portals to people’s fantasy worlds. Focusing on the moments when the performers are off-screen, a meticulous concatenation of ghostly spaces takes us on an unsettling journey of self-expression and lonesome desire.

No One Cried

2021

No artwork available
NR

Experimental short film.

Biwes

2016

No artwork available
NR

Experimental short film.

Cuculí

2011

No artwork available
NR

Someone is speaking while the camera focuses on them in close-up. We gradually realize that they are lip-reading the actors in a film that is playing silently. The alteration of the transmission-reception process places us on a different plane.

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

2010

No artwork available
NR

Filmed from the 15th floor of a hotel in downtown São Paulo, several athletes play soccer and basketball and skate around a colossal three-story sports field. Through a quick flicker, a 1931 animation by Dutch artist George Debels, titled De Dierenmarsch (The March of the Animals), is juxtaposed. The grids that define the two rooms merge into an elusive perspective, creating the illusion that the animals and athletes are interacting in the same space.

Grid Room (Featuring De Dierenmarsch by George Debels)

2016