Tomás Barreiro – Berlinale Talents 2021

PODCAST | This interview is about music composer Tomás Barreiro, selected for this year edition of Berlinale Talents 2021.

Tomás Barreiro (b. 1976) is a composer, orchestrator, interpreter and teacher, with more than 15 years of experience in the cinematographic medium. His portfolio includes TV shows, theater, advertising, and over 20 feature films, both mexican and international productions. Some of the prizes and nominations he has received throughout his career include: Ariel and Fénix Prizes, Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival and Chicago International Film Festival, among others.

Besides his distinguished trajectory as a film composer, Barreiro has an active participation in concert music. His work has been awarded in very prestigious composition contests around the world. He received the 2012 Sayat Nova Composition Award; and in 2008, the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award, whose jury included the well known composer Steve Reich. His compositions have been premiered in different countries around the world, including: France, United States, Poland and Japan.

From the beginning of his career as a film composer, Barreiro has worked in relevant mexican productions, such as: Güeros (Ariel, 2014), Museo (Berlinale, 2018) and Verde (Luminus, 2016), from director Alonso Ruizpalacios, with whom he has closely collaborated since 2008. He also scored Alejandra Márquez Abella’s Las niñas bien (Ariel, 2018) and Bruno Santamaría’s first two feature films: Margarita (FICG, 2016) and Cosas que no hacemos (CIFF, 2020). Most recently, Barreiro has expanded his career to Latin America and the United States, with productions like Bad Hombres (United States, 2020) a documentary directed by Andrew Glazer, and Jezabel (Venezuela, 2021) by Hernán Jabes.

Tomás Barreiro is currently a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, a program that reunites Mexico’s most distinguished artists. He is also a teacher at the Panamerican University in Mexico City, and Hidalgo State’s National Music School, where he teaches film scoring to graduate and undergraduate students.

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