Gregg Araki (born December 17, 1959) is an American filmmaker involved heavily with New Queer Cinema. His film Kaboom was the first winner of the Cannes Film Festival Queer Palm awarded in 2010. Araki was born in Los Angeles on December 17, 1959 to Japanese American parents. He grew up in nearby Santa Barbara, California and enrolled in college at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He graduated with a B.A. from UCSB in 1982. He later attended the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, where he graduated with a M.F.A. in 1985. Araki made his directorial debut in 1987 with Three Bewildered People in the Night. With a budget of only US$5,000 and using a stationary camera, he told the story of a romance between a video artist, her sweet-heart and her gay friend. Two years later, Araki followed up with The Long Weekend (O' Despair), another film with a US$5,000 budget. His third film, The Living End, saw an increase to US$20,000. He had to shoot his early movies often spontaneously and lacking proper permits. Despite the financial constraints, Araki's films received critical acclaim. He received awards from the Locarno International Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, with an additional nomination for a Sundance Film Festival award.Araki's next three movies — Totally Fucked Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere — were collectively dubbed the "Teen Apocalypse Trilogy". The trio has been characterized as "... teen alienation, hazy sexuality and aggression." A former student of his at UC Santa Barbara, Andrea Sperling, co-produced the films with him. The trilogy saw Araki work increasingly with more notable actors and actresses including Rose McGowan, Margaret Cho, Parker Posey, Guillermo Díaz, Ryan Phillippe, Heather Graham, and Mena Suvari among others.The Trilogy received varying degrees of reviews, from a thumbs down and "zero stars" by Roger Ebert to "Literally the Best Thing Ever" by Rookie and being heralded as cult classics. Araki at the Deauville American Film Festival in September 2010. One consistent feature of Araki's work to date is the presence of music from the shoegazing genre as film soundtracks, first seen on Totally Fucked Up and heavily so on the films Nowhere and Mysterious Skin. Both The Living End and Nowhere owe their titles to this shoegaze influence; The Living End after like-named The Jesus and Mary Chain song and Nowhere after Ride's album entitled Nowhere.In 2010, Kaboom was named the first ever winner of the Cannes Film Festival Queer Palm. Araki has also been honored with the 2006 Filmmaker on the Edge Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival. In 2013, Araki was recognized by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City with the retrospective God Help Me: Gregg Araki.

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