About

Work

Pedro Eiras

Pedro Eiras is an award-winning screenwriter, playwright, dramaturg, and journalist who came to film and TV after spending over five years traveling across Brazil as a journalist. He works at the intersection of dramaturgy, journalism, and creative writing, exploring themes of history, democracy, and the role of storytelling in shaping collective memory around complex current and past events. A recent MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Pedro’s projects have been supported by institutions in both Brazil and the U.S., and he has been a finalist for fellowships and labs including the Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellowship, the Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative, and the Neukom Institute Literary Award. His grandfather’s persecution during Brazil’s dictatorship inspired a podcast currently in development. 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 from 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 Eiras is a screenwriter, playwright, dramaturg and journalist currently based in Amherst, MA, where he recently received his MFA in Dramaturgy at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst with a full scholarship. At UMass, he has worked as a Teaching Associate, Production Assistant, Dramaturg and Director.

In the US, he has been selected as a finalist or semi-finalist for the Dramatist Guild Foundation National Fellowship, for the Neukom Institute Literary Award at Dartmouth College, for the Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative at Illinois State University, for Company One Theater's Volt Lab, for the Playwrighty Incubator Collective, for the STX Latinx New Play Festival, for the Latino Playwriting Celebration at Texas State University, for the Dramatic Question Theater Classics in Color Program in New York, for the LATC Encuentros! in Los Angeles, 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 the FRAPA Screenwriting Contest (Brazil’s largest screenwriting award).

He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Master's Degree 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).