Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga returned to UNT this spring as the first artist-in-residence of the new Institute for the Advancement of the Arts, housed at UNT on the Square.

His visit included a screening and discussion of his film The Burning Plain, a reading of his works and an open forum about film and filmmaking, in addition to work with UNT classes.

Arriaga was nominated for an Academy Award in 2007 for his screenplay for Babel, which also received nominations from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Writers Guild of America. In 2005, he won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones.