Umar Riaz is a former Student Oscar nominated filmmaker and photographer from Lahore, Pakistan. In 2009, he graduated as a University Honor’s Scholar with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Cinema Studies from New York University's College of Arts and Science. He then graduated from the prestigious Graduate Film Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a Master’s in Fine Arts in Filmmaking and Production where he was awarded an Ang Lee Scholarship for 'exceptionally talented graduate film students.'
His award winning films have screened at film festivals internationally including at the Locarno Film Festival, the Raindance Film Festival, the Woodstock Film Festival, Cinequest, HBO and BET's Urbanworld Film Festival amongst several others.
He was Artistic Consultant for Cannes Palm D’Or winning director Terrence Malick on 'Knight of Cups' (2016) and as well as an Additional Editor for Mr Malick's film 'Song to Song' (2017). He also contributed a scene to director Spike Lee’s film ‘Chi-raq’, the first film produced by Amazon Studios and released in 2015.
In 2020, he was among selected filmmakers to represent Pakistan with a film installation at the Pakistan Pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai. The Pavillion went on to win the Silver Award for Best Exhibition design at the Expo 2020 awards out of 192 countries.
His music videos for Pakistani artists Ali Sethi, Zeb & Haniya, Meesha Shafi and Jimmy Khan have amassed more than 6 million views on YouTube.
Riaz has also been a visiting instructor for film-making at the renowned Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) as well as at the historic National College of Arts (NCA) in Pakistan.
His photography has been exhibited at the Koel Gallery in Karachi where his selected works now reside in the permanent collection. It has also been published internationally in Forbes and Hyperallergic as well as Pakistan’s premier English-language publications DAWN as well as The Friday Times.
