Fabián Bielinsky

Fabián Bielinsky (3 February 1959 – 28 June 2006) was an Argentine film director and screenwriter. After years working in advertising and as an assistant director, he wrote and directed two features, the crime caper Nine Queens and the neo-noir The Aura (2005). Both won the Silver Condor awards for Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay from the Argentine Film Critics Association, and The Aura was Argentina's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Nine Queens was sold to some 30 countries and remade in Hollywood as Criminal (2004).

Bielinsky died of a heart attack at the age of 47, two days after The Aura won six Silver Condor awards. In a 2022 survey of the best films in the history of Argentine cinema, Nine Queens ranked tenth and The Aura twelfth.

Early life

Bielinsky was born in Buenos Aires on 3 February 1959. He began making films as a member of the student film group at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, and in 1972, at the age of thirteen, shot his first short film, an adaptation of the Julio Cortázar story "Continuity of Parks".