Born in 1977, Jayro Bustamante spent his childhood in the highlands of Guatemala. In this wild and isolated environment, he developed a prolific imagination, nourished by the magical realism that permeates Guatemalan culture. He discovered cinema in front of his television, through videotapes. After working in advertising, he left in 2000 with a small amount of savings in his pocket to study the seventh art in Europe.

Returning to Guatemala in the early 2010s, he made his first films and was a pioneer in a country where the film industry was non-existent. Recognition soon followed as the 2015 Berlinale awarded the Alfred Bauer Prize for his first feature film Ixcanul. This dive into the land of his childhood evokes the discrimination suffered by the Mayan community. It is also – with Temblores in 2017 and La Llorona in 2019 – the first part of a trilogy that tackles the taboos of Guatemalan society.