Madrid. Alejandro Amenábar is celebrating his 50th birthday, thirty of which he has devoted entirely to cinema. Seven films, an Oscar, a Golden Globe and nine Goya awards mark his half century of a life that changed when he met José Luis Cuerda, whom he described as “his second father”.
Alejandro was born in Chile in 1972 because his mother, Spanish, she had married a Chilean worker in this country. But it was in 1973, following Augusto Pinochet’s coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende, that the family traveled to Madrid to settle in the town of Paracuellos del Jarama.
Amenábar hardly watched television and went to the movies, but he soon became fond of images. Occasional jobs as a gardener or warehouse stocker allowed him to buy his first video camera before entering the Faculty of Information Sciences, whose Audiovisual Communication career never ended because he considered it far from professional reality.
His professional life changed in 1993 when he met José Luis Cuerda. The father of one of the actresses in his first short film, “Hymenopter”, spoke to the director from Albacete about a boy who directed, wrote scripts, composed music and worked as an editor. As soon as he met him, Cuerda encouraged him to finish the script for “Tesis”, his debut feature, and promised to find him a production company.
After knocking on several doors and not getting an affirmative answer, Cuerda opted for the young man and created “Las Producciones del Escorpión” to produce the tape. This premiered in 1996 and had an outstanding public and critical success.
It won seven of the eight Goya awards for which it was nominated, and Amenábar himself won three of them (best film, best new director and best original screenplay). The first three of a list that, for the moment, extends to nine.
On February 4, 2020, when Cuerda passed away, Amenábar remembered that bet of what he considered “a second father” and “one of the greats of Spanish culture”. “He was the person who opened the doors for me. I had no connection to the world of cinema and he saw a short film of mine and called me when he was still in college, ”reported EFE.
The collaboration between the two filmmakers continued with two more films, “Abre los ojos” (1997) and “Los otros” (2001), which allowed her to break into Hollywood, as it starred Nicole Kidman and was produced by her then-husband, Tom Cruise. The film triumphed again at the Goya Awards, achieving eight of the fifteen nominations, including best film and best director.
In 2004, Amenábar already flies solo and directs and produces “The Sea Inside”, based on the true story of Ramón Sampedro, an ex-marine who remains quadriplegic after an accident in his youth that keeps him bedridden for thirty years and who claims his right to die through the application of euthanasia. Again he composes his soundtrack and writes the script with his friend, also director Mateo Gil.
This film consolidated the filmmaker and gave him the greatest recognition in awards that a Spanish film has received to date: the Oscar for the best foreign language film, the Golden Globe, the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the Independent Spirit and 14 of the 15 Goya awards, including best film, director, music and screenplay, all of them for Amenábar himself.
Always jealous of his personal life, perhaps he was surprised that he made his homosexuality public in full promotion of the movie “Sea Inside” because, as he stated, he wanted to be honest with himself and with others; “help normalize the situation and avoid the ambiguity of yes, but no”. In 2015, she married David Blanco, whom she divorced in 2019, after separating from him the previous year.
The filmography of the Spanish-Chilean filmmaker, since he maintains both nationalities, is completed on the big screen with the films “Ágora”, “Regression” and “While the war lasts”.
He has also directed the adventure mini-series “La Fortuna” for Movistar+, two commercial short films, “Vale” and “Danielle”, and the video clip “I love it” by the Spanish pop music group Nancys Rubias.
Read more: What does it mean that Will Smith resigns from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?
Amenábar celebrates his 50 years of life with a filmography recognized in movie theaters on five continents and with awards as director, producer, screenwriter and composer, and even two cameos as an actor in “Abre los ojos” and “Spanish Movie” that make him a total filmmaker who passed his “Thesis” with flying colors more than half a century ago.
#Alejandro #Amenábar #turns #life #dedicated #cinema