Federico Veiroj was born in 1976 in Montevideo, Uruguay. A film programmer turned director, he graduated in Media from UCUDAL. His debut feature film, Acné (2008), premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. Both this film and his second film, La vida útil (2010), have won more than 20 awards worldwide. In 2015, El Apóstata won the FIPRESCI Award and a Special Mention from the Jury at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. His fourth feature, Belmonte (2018), premiered in Toronto, just as Así habló el cambista (2019). Between 2015 and 2017, the Viennale, the Harvard Film Archive, and the Svenska Filminstitutet (Sweden) dedicated a showcase and retrospective to all his film work.