Alan Ereira is a British documentary filmmaker and director. He was born in London in 1947. Ereira studied at the University of Manchester, where he gained a degree in English Literature, and later went on to do postgraduate studies in Film and Television at the Royal College of Art.
Ereira started his career in the 1970s with the BBC, working as a director and producer on various documentaries. His first documentary, The Heart of the Andes, was released in 1979 and focused on the life of a small village in Peru. This was followed by several more documentaries about Latin America and the Caribbean, including The Journey of the Magi (1980), The Enemy Within (1981) and The Miracle of Guarani (1982).
In the 1980s, Ereira worked on a number of documentaries about the history of Peru. This included the Emmy Award-winning series Conquest (1985), which looked at the Spanish conquest of Peru, and the BAFTA-winning series The Burning Heart of Peru (1989), which focused on the political and social changes in Peru during the 1980s.
In the 1990s, Ereira directed several documentaries about the history of the British Empire, including Empire of the Sun (1995), an examination of the British Empire's impact on India, and The Empire in Africa (1997), a look at the British Empire's rule in Africa. He also directed the critically acclaimed series The Story of India (2007), which looked at the history of India from the Stone Age to the present day.
In recent years, Ereira has continued to focus on documentary filmmaking, directing films such as The Unforgiving Minute (2009) and The People's Story (2015), both of which looked at the impact of the British Empire on the people of India. He is also involved in producing and directing a series of films about the history and culture of the Caribbean, entitled The Caribbean Odyssey (2009 - 2017).
Ereira has won numerous awards and accolades for his work, including the British Academy Television Awards for Best Documentary Series for The Burning Heart of Peru (1989) and The Story of India (2007). He has also received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary or Non-Fiction Programming for Empire of the Sun (1995).
Ereira is now retired and lives in London with his wife and three children. He continues to be involved in documentary filmmaking, with his latest project being a series about the history
