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Guillermo Arriaga Jordán (b. 1958) is an Academy Award-nominated, award-winning Mexican author, screenwriter and producer. He received the 2005 Cannes Film Festival Best Screenplay Award for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Arriaga was born in Mexico City and spent his childhood in one of the most violent sectors of the metropolis. At the age of 13 he lost the sense of smell after a brutal street fight that would later serve as inspiration to some of his best screenplays.

He completed a B.A. in Communications and a M.A. in Psychology at the Universidad Iberoamericana, where he taught several courses in media studies before joining the ITESM. Self-defined as “a hunter that works as a writer”, he authored Amores Perros (2000 BAFTA's Best Film not in the English Language), received a BAFTA's Best Screenplay nomination for 21 Grams and received the 2005 Cannes Best Screenplay Award for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Guillermo Arriaga with director Alejandro González Iñárritu planned to make 11 shorts showing the contradictions of Mexico City but after three years and 36 drafts, they ended up expanding three stories into the feature length film, "Amores Perros" (1999). This gritty look at the underbelly of Mexican life won an Oscar nomination for "Best Foreign Film" as well as a BAFTA Film Award for "Best Film not in the English Language," the "Critics Week Grand Prize" and "Young Critics Award" at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival as well as many other awards from festivals and societies around the world.

The success of "Amores Perros" won Arriaga and Iñárritu an invitation to the U.S. to work on the Universal/Focus feature film 21 Grams, starring Benicio del Toro, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. Watts and del Toro received Academy Award nominations for their performances.

Iñárritu and Arriaga collaborated on a third movie, Babel, to form a trilogy with his first two pictures focusing on the theme of death. However, friction between writer and director led to Iñarritu banning Arriaga from attending the 2006 Cannes screening of Babel. Nevertheless, the film, Inarritu and Arriaga all received Academy Award nominations.

On January 19 the film adaptation of his book El Búfalo de la Noche directed by Jorge Hernandez Aldana premiered at the Sundance film festival. It features an original score by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of The Mars Volta.

• Amores perros (2000) ISBN 0-571-21415-0
• The Hire: Powder Keg (2001)
• 21 Grams (2004) ISBN 0-571-22266-8
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
• Babel (2006)
• El Búfalo de la Noche (2007)

Professions: screenwriter, novelist, documentary director, radio and television producer, college professor

• Escuadrón Guillotina (1991)
• Un Dulce Olor a Muerte (1994) ISBN 958-04-6169-4
• El Búfalo de la Noche (1999)
• Night Buffalo (23 May 2006), published by Atria Books (in English) ISBN 0-7432-8185-3

• Guillermo Arriaga at the Internet Movie Database
• (Spanish) El Malpensante: Interview with Guillermo Arriaga.