He made his first film Wandering Shadows in 2004 at the age of 23. The film was selected as Colombian submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards, however it was not nominated. His next film The Wind Journeys competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was selected as Colombian submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards; it also was not selected. His 2015 film Embrace of the Serpent was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the C.I.C.A.E. Award. It won the Best Film award in the InternationalFilm Festivals of Odessa and Lima, where it also received a special prize by the Critics Jury. The film was also among the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards, being the first Colombian film ever to be nominated. On 22 November 2017, Netflix ordered the limited series Green Frontier to production. Green Frontier is based on an original idea from Diego Ramírez Schrempp and Jenny Ceballos of Dynamo Producciones. Guerra is credited as an executive producer of the series, alongside, Diego Ramírez Schrempp, Andrés Calderón, Jorge Dorado and Cristian Conti. The series was directed by Guerra, Laura Mora Ortega and Jacques Toulemonde Vidal and written by Mauricio Leiva-Cock, Antón Goenechea, Camila Brugrés, Gibrán Portela, Javier Peñalosa, María Camila Arias, Natalia Santa and Nicolás Serrano. The miniseries premiered on Netflix on 16 August 2019. In 2018, Guerra released his fourth feature film, Birds of Passage. Filmed in La Guajira Desert, Colombia, Guerra states that it is "like a gangster film, but something completely different from any gangster film that you have ever seen". Guerra will make his Hollywood debut directing an adaptation of the dystopian adventure book The Detainee by Peter Liney, which will be written by Grant Myers. Guerra is working on another film: an adaptation of J. M. Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians, starring Mark Rylance.
Personal life
Guerra was married to his longtime producer Cristina Gallego. The couple divorced during the filming of Birds of Passage which they co-directed.
Sexual misconduct accusations
In 2020, Latin American feminist periodical Volcánicas published an in-depth investigation with 8 women in the film industry accusing Guerra of sexual harassment and rape. The accusations covered a period of 6 years. Guerra denied the accusations and vowed to pursue legal action against those who had made them.
