At the age of 15, he stumbled into filmmaking as an actor in a short film competition in school. Eight years later, at the age of 23, his short film Prenjak (In the Year of the Monkey) was awarded the Leica Cine Discovery Award at Cannes. Widely recognised for being at the forefront of a new generation of Indonesian filmmakers, Wregas captures the Javanese way of life with a young, bold and fresh sensibility.