Gregory Nava

Gregory Nava (born April 10, 1949 in San Diego, California) is a film director, producer and screenplay writer, of Mexican and Basque heritage. Nava attended film school at UCLA where he earned an MFA in 1976. At UCLA he directed the short film The Journal of Diego Rodriguez Silva (based on the life of García Lorca), and for this work, won the Best Dramatic Film Award at the National Student Film Festival. While an instructor at Moorpark College ... more

Gregory Nava (born April 10, 1949 in San Diego, California) is a film director, producer and screenplay writer, of Mexican and Basque heritage. Nava attended film school at UCLA where he earned an MFA in 1976. At UCLA he directed the short film The Journal of Diego Rodriguez Silva (based on the life of García Lorca), and for this work, won the Best Dramatic Film Award at the National Student Film Festival. While an instructor at Moorpark College teaching classes in cinematography, Nava's first feature film, The Confessions of Amans, won the Best First Feature Award at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1976. Later, he came to the attention of Hollywood producers due to the success of El Norte, which garnered Nava and his wife Anna Thomas an Academy Award nomination, among other accolades, for the screenplay. In 1995 the film was registered by the Library of Congress, National Film Registry. According to Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, "El Norte tells [the] story... less