Pedro Eiras is an award-winning screenwriter and playwright who came to film and TV after years traveling across Brazil as a journalist. His work draws on investigative journalism, dramaturgy, and creative writing to explore political history, democracy, and the role of storytelling in shaping collective memory around complex past and present events. A recent MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Pedro is a Fellow of the Sundance Cultural Impact Residency, and his work has been recognized by organizations including the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, and the Neukom Institute at Dartmouth College. His grandfather’s persecution during Brazil’s dictatorship inspired an audio series currently in development with Audible. He’s also working on projects about Nazi escape routes, U.S. foreign policy, and Cold War–era geopolitics. Previously, he wrote the first season of the TV show Histories of the Brazilian People (Giro Filmes and Canal Curta) and the screenplay for the film If I Die, about a secret torture site during Brazil’s dictatorship, currently in development with Coqueirão Pictures and Raccord Filmes. Pedro is also drawn to genre writing (particularly science fiction and fantasy) as a means to reimagine history and explore truth through speculative lenses.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Pedro recently received his MFA in Dramaturgy at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst with a full scholarship. At UMass, he worked as a Teaching Associate, Production Assistant, Dramaturg and Director. In the United States, he was selected as a Fellow of the Sundance Cultural Impact Residency, and his work has been recognized by organizations including the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Dramatist Guild Foundation National Fellowship, the Neukom Institute Literary Award at Dartmouth College, the Blue Ink Award by the American Blues Theater in Chicago, the Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative at Illinois State University, La Lengua Theater Decolonization Stories Festival in San Francisco, Company One Theater's Volt Lab in Boston, the Playwrighty Incubator Collective in Northampton, the STX Latinx New Play Festival in Texas, the Latino Playwriting Celebration at Texas State University, Dramatic Question Theater’s Classics in Color Program in New York, the LATC Encuentros! in Los Angeles, the LPC and Teatro Círculo's Media Luna X First Call Mixer Series, and for the James Baldwin Playwriting Award at Smith College. In Brazil, his projects have been selected for the Varilux Festival Screenwriting Lab and for the pitching session at the Rio Creative Conference (Rio2C), have been awarded at the Rio2C Creative Journey Project, at the Cel-UCine Festival and at the Argila Award, and have been finalists and semi-finalists at FRAPA (Brazil’s largest screenwriting award).
He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Master of Arts in literature and film from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, where he specialized in media adaptation (with a focus on literary adaptations to the stage and screen). He is a US State Department alumni, having taken part in the Observing the US Institutions Program at North Carolina State University. He has two Certificates from the International Cinema Academy in Rio de Janeiro, and has developed and taught an extension program in screenwriting for TV and Film at the Catholic University of Petrópolis. As a journalist, he has worked at the United Nations Information Center in Rio de Janeiro, at the Science and Culture Forum of the Federal University of Rio, at the Federal Attorneys Office in Rio, at EducationUSA (a US Department of State organization) and at TRIAS (a Belgium NGO).