Lois Patiño was born in Vigo, Spain. His films have been screened in festivals as Locarno, Toronto, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Viennale, Cinema du Rèel, Media City. While his video installation have been shown in arts center such as MACBA (Barcelona), Copperfield Gallery (London), CC San Martín (Buenos Aires), JIFF Art Gallery (South Korea) and art fairs like Paris Photo, ARCO Madrid or Unseen (Amsterdam).
With Mountain in Shadow (2012) he was awarded at Oberhausen, Clermont-Ferrand and Bucharest Experimental. In 2013 in Locarno he won the prize for Best Emerging Director for his first feature film Costa da Morte (2013), which was consequently awarded in Jeonju IFF (South Korea), FICUNAM (México), Valdivia IFF (Chile) and Seville European FF (Spain).
His second feature film Red Moon Tide premiered at the Berlinale – Forum in 2020, and was screened at the MoMA (NY) for New Directors/New Films, among other more than 50 festivals around the world.
His short film Sycorax (2021), codirected with Matías Piñeiro, premiered at Quinzaine des Réalisateurs – Festival di Cannes 2021, and it was shown in festivals such as Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival.
Specific focuses on his work have taken place in New York Film Festival (Views from the Avant Garde), Flaherty Seminar, BAFICI and Cali IFF.
​He has been invited to show his work at universities such as Harvard (Sensory Ethnography Lab), Cal Arts (L.A.), McGill (Montreal), FUC (Buenos Aires). From Harvard he received the Robert Fulton III Fellowship for emerging directors in 2016.