Gregg Araki

Gregg Araki is one of those filmmakers who feels like he was beamed in from a parallel universe where queer punk kids got to tell their own stories before anyone gave them permission. Coming out of USC and the early-90s New Queer Cinema wave, he made his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy — Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation, Nowhere — on shoestring budgets with a raw, neon-drenched style that felt like no one else working at the time. I love that he never cleaned himself up for mainstream respectability; even when he pivoted to something more polished like Mysterious Skin, the emotional gut-punch was still completely his. Winning the inaugural Queer Palm at Cannes for Kaboom in 2010 felt like a perfect full-circle moment. He's a singular voice, full stop.

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Name (English)

Gregg Araki

Name (Japanese)

グレッグ・アラキ

Reading

ぐれっぐ・あらき

Born

December 17, 1959 (age 66)

Origin

Los Angeles, California, United States

Occupation

film director / screenwriter / film editor / cinematographer / film producer

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Boar

University

University of Southern California

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg%20Araki
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AC%E3%83%83%E3%82%B0%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%A9%E3%82%AD
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q708899

Tags

• California
• film director
• screenwriter
• film editor

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.