Leonardo Pirondi is a Brazilian-Portuguese filmmaker and artist who lives and works between Los Angeles, Porto, and São Paulo. His films build and inhabit alternative worlds that move between reality and fiction; his filmmaking practice challenges traditional narrative structures that emerge from the fabulation of sociopolitical resonances within culture, history, technology, image-making, and orality. His films have been exhibited in various festivals, such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Tiger Short Competition in Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, Viennale, Mar del Plata, FICUNAM, BFI London, and Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. He is a Sundance Institute Fellow and holds B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in film from the California Institute of the Arts.
While at MacDowell, Pirondi made further progress on the development phase of two feature films, Contos do Céu à Margem do Rio and AMERIKA'ATINGA. For these two films, he worked on a significant portion of the writing, as well as on the worldmaking components, including drawings, sounds, music, and audiovisual samples, utilizing research materials. Leonardo also made a lot of progress on the post-production of an upcoming short film called Caminhos que se Bifurcam, which also includes footage he filmed on 16mm film during the residency and music he created in collaboration with fellow artist-in-residence Brent Watanabe. During his time at MacDowell, he also worked on the teaser and trailer for his debut feature film Fractais Tropicais, which will premiere in 2026.
Portrait by Zazie Ray Trapido
