Biography
Nahuel Lopez was born in Hamburg on March 2, 1978 and he grew up in both Hamburg and Barcelona. After graduating from high school, starting in 2001, he trained as an advertising merchant before starting his own business, an agency for guerilla marketing. In 2004, Lopez enrolled for Political Studies at Hamburg University. He began working for the publishing houses Axel Springer Verlag and Gruner & Jahr and became a freelance journalist for magazines of Milchstraße publishing like "Quest" and "Max" alongside his studies. Eventually, he dropped out of university to complete a traineeship for the TV production company Cinecentrum (producers of "Soko Wismar" and the NDR "Tatort" edition).
Afterwards, he worked as an editor for the ARD program "Beckmann" from 2005 to mid-2009 and then became editorial director for the ZDF talk show "Markus Lanz". Lopez also continued working as a freelance author for the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" (2007-2014) among others. As Alfred Biolek's co-author he worked on the book "Meine Heimat Europa: Reisen-Begegnen-Erinnern" (2010); he also co-authored Ole von Beust's "Mutproben – Ein Plädoyer für Ehrlichkeit und Konsequenz" (2012). Two years later, his own book "Das Paradies ist die Hölle" was published. It is about his journey to the last of the Mapuche tribe in Chile. Lopez, who has Chilean roots himself, also worked as a lecturer at Medienakademie Hamburg.
The mainstay of his work, however, was filmmaking. In 2012, he founded the production office "Granvista Media" which produced advertising and image films (i.a. Volvo, Zalando) among others. Granvista also produced Lopez's debut as a feature film director, the documentary "El Viaje". The film sees Lopez accompany the Chilean-born musician Rodrigo González, bass player for the band "Die Ärzte" searching for his musical roots in Chile. "El Viaje" opened in German theaters in August 2016.
A year later, Lopez's next documentary was released: "Daniel Hope - Der Klang des Lebens" ("Daniel Hope: The Sound of Life", 2017), about the life and artistic work of Daniel Hope, one of the most important and respected violinists of our time. For television, Lopez made the documentary "Vor dem Knall," which captured the increasingly tense atmosphere in Hamburg before the 2017 G20 summit. Also for television, Lopez wrote and directed the series "Muspilli" (2022), about two social misfits – a single mother and a conspiracy theorist – who become a couple.
At the Munich DOK.fest in May 2022, Lopez presented his documentary feature "Dear Memories - Eine Reise mit dem Magnum-Fotografen Thomas Hoepker" ("Dear Memories – A Journey with Magnum Photographer Thomas Hoepker"). The regular release was a few weeks later.