Cary Joji Fukunaga

Cary Fukunaga
Cary Fukunaga at the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival
Born	Cary Joji Fukunaga (1977-07-10) July 10, 1977 (age 39) Oakland, California, U.S.
Residence	New York City, New York, U.S.
Education	Grenoble Institute of Political Studies
Alma mater	University of California, Santa Cruz Tisch School of the Arts
Occupation	Director Writer Cinematographer
Years active	2003–present

Cary Joji Fukunaga (born July 10, 1977) is an American film director, writer, and cinematographer. He is known for writing and directing the 2009 film Sin Nombre, the 2011 film Jane Eyre and for directing and executive producing the first season of the HBO series True Detective, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. He has received acclaim for the 2015 war drama Beasts of No Nation, in which Fukunaga was writer, director, producer, and cinematographer.

Fukunaga was born in Alameda, California. His father Anthony Shuzo Fukunaga was a third-generation Japanese-American, born in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. His mother Gretchen May Grufman is Swedish-American, who worked as a dental hygienist and later as a history college instructor and university assistant professor of history, from whom Cary got his original interest in history. His parents divorced and remarried, his father to an Argentine woman, and his mother to a Mexican-American.

Fukunaga said that his uncles and aunts are all elementary school teachers or scientists. His family moved around a lot within the San Francisco Bay Area, moving to Berkeley, Albany, Vallejo, Benicia, Sebastopol and back to Oakland.

Fukunaga originally wanted to be a pro snowboarder, but switched to filmmaking in his mid-twenties. He got his start as a camera intern and later applied to film school. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1999, and attended Institut d'études politiques (IEP) de Grenoble. He enrolled in New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film Program.