"Pablo is an extraordinary young man. I have a soft spot for self-taught kids. My parents were Christian missionaries who worked with heroin addicts in Madrid, Spain. Some years, my parents didn’t have enough money to send my brothers and me to school, and my mother taught us. Yet I became a Rhodes Scholar and my brothers and I all graduated from Oxford. Pablo’s parents were among the first heroin addicts in the program, and he’s self-taught like me. 

 

When he was a teenager, I showed him The 400 Blows and The Bicycle Thieves to expand his horizons. He was hooked and told me he wanted to be a film director. For the next few years, I gave him hundreds of books and movies to read and watch, and he devoured them. As part of his education, I asked him to write countless essays on films exploring the hero’s journey, the role of leitmotifs in soundtracks, linear vs non-linear narratives, the history of the heist genre, the conventions of romantic comedies, etc. He’s wise beyond his years. He’s passionate about storytelling, entertaining and creating empathy through film. The world should expect great things from this young man.”

 

Jonathan Tepper

Rhodes Scholar and fund manager

www.jonathan-tepper.com