DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY - Juan Carlos Mostaza

Juan Carlos Mostaza (Valladolid, Spain, 06/10/1979), an engineer and Ph.D. in audiovisual communication, has a career spanning several decades in the industry. Passionate about cinema since childhood, he found in 3D animation and special effects the perfect link between his academic background and his true vocation. He has directed animated and live-action short films, garnering numerous international awards, including the Silver Biznaga at the Málaga Film Festival and the Feroz Award. His works have been nominated for the Goya Awards and selected at prestigious qualifying festivals for the Oscars, BAFTAs, and European Film Awards, winning on several occasions. Variety Magazine highlighted him as one of the five new Spanish talents to watch. Currently, he is a founding partner of The Cathedral Media Productions, a production company specializing in 3D animation and post-production, where he serves as a VFX Supervisor on short films, music videos, and feature films. His experience in the advertising field has led him to direct various live-action and animated commercials, in addition to creating and scripting concepts for campaigns for different brands. As a screenwriter, he has also collaborated with FOX Latin America in the creation of original content. He combines his professional activity with university teaching as a professor of Digital Compositing and VFX. “Under the Lake” is his ninth short film as a director, after “Broken Wire” (2007), “Casitas” (2008), “Tiempo” (2009), “Down to the Wire” (2015), “Amandine” (2019), “Reflejo” (2020), “Humbug Manor” (2023) and “El síndrome del recomendado” (2025).