Horacio Reyes Páez was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1987.

 

His first contact with filmmaking was at the age of 15 at the Dodecá Film School in Montevideo. In 2007 he studied theater and acting for the camera at the Montevideo Acting Institute.
 
In 2008 he moved to Buenos Aires to study at the Universidad del Cine (FUC) and graduated as Director in 2012. His first fiction short film "Soldado de Plomo" (2010) was produced with the endorsement of the University, winning the contest for its realization in 35 mm. During that early stage of studies he ventures into experimental cinema, winning the award for best short film in new formats at the Rojas Fest in Buenos Aires (2013) with his film "El efecto del amor."

In Buenos Aires he is also trained as a theater director as a pupil of maestro Juan Carlos Gené.

​

Parallel to filmmaking, his career as a musician that began in Uruguay at the age of 7 as a classical guitarist, led him to settle in the city of Vienna (Austria) in 2015 with a scholarship by invitation of internationally renowned maestro Alvaro Pierri, current head of the Chair of Strings and Harp from the Music University of Vienna (MDW).

​

In 2020 he won the Jury Mention for his short film "A Prayer" at the Piriápolis International Film Festival (Uruguay).

​

In 2021 he won the Audience Award at the José Ignacio Int. Film Festival for his film "Dance for the Apocalypse" where in addition to being a director, he is the composer and performer of the music. This award led him to screen "Dance for the Apocalypse" out of competition in the Short Film Corner of the 74th Cannes Film Festival (2021).

​

In Vienna he films his experimental documentary “From Blanes to Klimt” (2017) selected at festivals such as the Vienna Independent Film Festival and Wien Suburbinale.

 

Also in Vienna he writes, films and directs "Pillow" (2020), awarded as Best Uruguayan Short Film at the José Ignacio Int. Film Festival (2022), also being part of the 75th Cannes Film Festival at the Short Film Corner. "Pillow" was also named by the Uruguayan Association of Film Critics  (ACCU) as one of the five best short films of the year.

His independent documentary "A son portrays his father" was part of the official competition of 16 Atlantidoc (Uruguay) in 2022. 

​

In 2022 he finished writing the script for his first feature film El Rosario de los Andes, which is being developed by the uruguayan production company UFilms.

​

As a photographer, he has stood out especially from his project "The Big Rest" produced in 2020 during the forced quarantine in Uruguay. This work was published twice in the renowned contemporary art magazine IGNANT in Berlin. Since then his work as a visual artist has been published and printed in Vienna, London, Australia and New York.

​

Reyes Páez lives in Vienna working as a filmmaker, having founded his own independent audiovisual production company in the Austrian capital in 2016.