Mario F. de la Vega was born in Culiacan, Mexico, and raised in Boulder, Colorado from the age of five. Shortly after graduating from the University of Colorado with a degree in International Business, he returned to Mexico to run an export business deep in the mountains of Durango. However, de la Vega soon became more interested in Mexico’s people than in exporting and began writing. Instead of pursuing film school, he moved to Los Angeles for first-hand experience and was accepted into the IFP/Los Angeles mentoring program Project:Involve.

Desesperacion, the first third of Robbing Peter, was completed in March 2002 and featured at the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) 2002 conference. It also was recently awarded Honorable Mention for Best Short Film at the 26th annual Cinefestival en San Antonio. The script for Robbing Peter has been accepted in the first-ever Latino Writers’ Lab, being co-presented with the New York International Latino Film Festival and NALIP in March 2003. In Spring 2003, de la Vega will be directing the feature film adaptation of critically acclaimed play Pete’s Garage.