José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço is a writer and filmmaker who lives in Toronto with his adult wife, two small daughters, and an even smaller puppy who is practically perfect in every way.
___
His feature writing/directing debut is YOUNG WERTHER, a contemporary adaptation of Goethe’s smash hit 1774 novel of tragic romance. It premiered in the Special Presentations section of TIFF ’24, was nominated for the Jean-Marc Vallée Discovery Award, and subsequently acquired for theatrical distribution across the globe.
His most recent short film, ROMANCE LANGUAGE, won a BravoFACT production award, premiered at Palm Springs, jogged along from festival to festival, then sprinted online as a Vimeo Staff Pick. Other recent projects include the feature screenplay MASSEY ’53 for Rhombus Films, a feature screenplay for Simon Kinberg's Genre Pictures at Fox, and a rotating bookshelf for his youngest daughter’s room comprised of mostly IKEA Lazy Susans.
Speaking of children and books: with illustrator James Braithwaite he co-created and wrote the children’s book series BILLIE. The first Billie book launches in Spring 2025 and the second follows in Spring 2026. The series will be published by Tundra / Penguin Random House.
His narrative work has been nominated for a Juno Award (Music Video of the Year), a Canadian Screen Award, and an International Emmy.
He has directed commercials for Audi, Acura, PepsiCo, and Cineplex. As a creative consultant he has collaborated on broadcast and online campaigns for brands including Apple, Google, Nike, Mercedes, McDonald’s, Samsung, the NBA and the NFL.
He continues to write fiction and personal journalism, but has been pretty lax about maintaining an online archive of this work.
Some of it is here, at McSweeney’s. The rest has been set alight and is gently smouldering, like a floating funeral pyre left out in the rain the evening before the big day, which is nobody's fault, but still. I mentioned it so many times.