Rodrigo Grande
Rodrigo Grande is an Argentine Film Director and Screenwriter who works in the cinema of Argentina and the cinema of Spain. He is best known for writing and directing the crime thriller At the End of the Tunnel (Al final del túnel), winner of the Golden Space Needle Audience Awards for Best Film and Best Director at the 2017 Seattle International Film Festival, and for his screenwriting collaborations with the celebrated Argentine writer and cartoonist Roberto Fontanarrosa.
Released in 2016, At the End of the Tunnel is an Argentine and Spanish coproduction starring Leonardo Sbaraglia, Pablo Echarri, Clara Lago, and Federico Luppi, with cinematography by Félix “Chango” Monti, the director of photography of the Academy Award winning The Secret in Their Eyes. The film follows Joaquín, a paraplegic engineer who discovers that a gang of thieves is digging a tunnel beneath his house to rob the bank next door, and The Seattle Times described it as a Spanish-language homage to Rear Window.
Rodrigo, who lived in Spain for several years, spent around five years writing the screenplay. Produced by Vanessa Ragone, together with Pablo Echarri’s production company El Árbol, the film premiered in the Official Selection of the Rome Film Festival, was distributed across Latin America by Warner Bros., and drew more than 300,000 admissions in Argentina. Read Sbaraglia, Echarri y Rodrigo Grande se explican sobre “Al final del túnel” and his essay Rodrigo Grande escribe sobre el estreno español de “Al final del túnel”. Watch At the End of the Tunnel — Trailer with English Subtitles.
The 43rd Seattle International Film Festival in 2017 provided Rodrigo with even more accolades. At the End of the Tunnel won the Golden Space Needle Audience Awards for both Best Film and Best Director, selected from more than 82,000 audience ballots at the largest film festival in the United States. The film also won Best Thriller at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Washington, D.C. Film Festival, and the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Pelikula Manila Spanish Film Festival.
Read Seattle International Film Festival: ‘Sami Blood,’ ‘At the End of the Tunnel’ Come Out on Top, Thriller proves big winner at Seattle International Film Festival, and Iberoamerica Takes SIFF 2017: Seattle Audiences at the Largest U.S. Film Festival Embrace Spanish-Language Stories. Watch Virtual SIFF Cinema: SIFF Movie Club — At the End of the Tunnel.
In 2009, Rodrigo wrote, directed, and produced his second feature, Cuestión de principios (A Matter of Principles), starring Federico Luppi, Norma Aleandro, and Pablo Echarri. Rodrigo invited Roberto Fontanarrosa, the creator of Inodoro Pereyra and Boogie, el aceitoso, to choose one of his own short stories for the screen, and the two coauthored the adaptation, which became the writer’s only produced feature-film screenplay.
The film won Best Picture at the Huelva Latin American Film Festival in 2009, Best Narrative Feature at the San Diego Latino Film Festival in 2010, and Best Script at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) in 2010. It also earned Rodrigo the Sur Award for Best Adapted Screenplay from the Argentine Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences in 2010. Read Fontanarrosa, nombres famosos y una “Cuestión de principios” and ‘Cuestión de principios’, ¿integridad o testarudez?
Earlier, in 2007, Rodrigo wrote the screen adaptations for Los cuentos de Fontanarrosa, a 33-episode anthology series broadcast weekly on Argentina’s public television channel Canal 7, which brought Fontanarrosa’s short stories to the screen for the first time with guest performances by leading Argentine actors. Read Historias de un gracioso canalla.
Rodrigo made his feature debut in 2001 with the comedy Rosarigasinos (Gangs from Rosario), starring Federico Luppi and Ulises Dumont as two lifelong friends who are released from prison after 30 years and go searching for a treasure buried long ago. The film won the Special Jury Award at the Huelva Latin American Film Festival in 2001, Best First Work at LALIFF in 2001 and at the Lleida Latin-American Film Festival in 2002, and the Ciguapa de Oro for Best Picture at the Santo Domingo Film Festival in 2002. It also earned Grande Silver Condor nominations from the Argentine Film Critics Association for Best First Film and Best Original Screenplay.
A graduate of the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, Rodrigo began his career in the mid-1990s working in film crews, serving as an Assistant Director on Canción desesperada(1996) and in the sound departments of Lola Mora(1995) and El largo viaje de Nahuel Pan(1995). He wrote and directed the early short films La pared y la lluvia(1994) and Juntos, in any way(1996), which was released as part of the Historias breves 2short-film antholog, and he later directed the short Apto(2014). More recently, he served as Editor of the 2023 film Vrutos.
Following the success of At the End of the Tunnel, Rodrigo developed two television series with Diego Rosso, a fellow Universidad del Cine graduate — Triple Frontera, a drama set in the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, and Black Chronicles, a psychological thriller about a cross-border smuggling service. He is represented by manager Carlos Bobadilla, a principal at the Los Angeles based Valor Entertainment Group. Read Argentina’s Rodrigo Grande shopping pair of TV series.
Rodrigo was born on February 10, 1974 in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, Argentina.
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