Alejandro Amenabar

Alejandro Fernando Amenábar Cantos (Santiago, Chile, March 31, 1972) is a Spanish-Chilean film director, screenwriter and composer. Winner of nine Goya Awards and one Oscar, he has written the scripts of his seven films and has composed almost all the soundtracks of these films.

Biography

Alejandro Amenábar in the 2017 Goya Awards

Alejandro Amenábar in the Goya Awards 2019

Childhood and youth

He was born in Santiago de Chile —he currently maintains dual Spanish and Chilean nationality—. His mother is Josefina Cantos, a Spaniard born in Madrid, who had traveled to Chile where an older sister lived. There she married her father, Hugo Ricardo Amenábar, a Chilean national and worker at the General Electric company. The couple had two children, both born in Chile: Ricardo (1969) and Alejandro (1972). A year after Alejandro's birth, faced with the tense political environment in Chile (culminating in the Chilean coup in 1973), the family decided to move to Spain. In August 1973 they settled in Madrid, where their father began working at the Osram company. Upon their arrival, they temporarily settled in a caravan in a campsite, but they established their permanent residence in a quiet urbanization on the outskirts of the town. from Paracuellos de Jarama.

Studies

He began his studies at the school of the Piarist Fathers of Getafe. In his second year of high school, he transferred his studies to the Alameda de Osuna Institute, in the northeast of Madrid.

His parents always put a special zeal in their children's education, both in the choice of the center where they studied and in their free time. Neither Alejandro nor his brother were great consumers of television; They also did not see cinema on the big screen, which Alejandro began to attend when he was fifteen years old. His hobby was writing stories and reading youth stories. According to his mother, Alejandro had the ability to absorb everything he read.

Prior to college, he worked as a stock clerk at a grocery store and as a gardener, until he was able to buy a home video camera. He couldn't conceive of starting his university image studies without first having touched a camera.

In 1990, after completing his studies at the institute with good results, he entered the Faculty of Information Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, where he did not finish his studies, considering that they were excessively theoretical studies and very detached from professional reality.

A positive facet of his time at the university was meeting close people from the world of cinema, such as Mateo Gil, a friend and colleague with whom he later collaborated on several of his projects.

Film career

Between 1991 and 1995 he made four short films that, in a very significant way, later influenced his first films: the shorts La cabeza, Himenóptero and Luna have their older brothers in Tesis, The Sea Inside and Open Your Eyes.

From his facet as a composer it can be said that since he was little he composed melodies with the keyboard and the guitar with the same fluency as when writing stories. He learned music in a self-taught way to be able to score his short films. In 1993 he worked closely with Guillermo Fernández Groizard and made the music and premixes for Al lado del Atlas , a short film by students of Metropolis c.e. In fact, it seems that he gave his first composition for the main theme of Thesis to the aforementioned short film.

However, everything changed when she met José Luis Cuerda. A colleague from Cuerda gave him the Hymenoptera short so that he could give him his opinion. From then on, Cuerda became interested in the script for the future film Tesis (1996) and became its producer and the two following ones. Tesis is a thriller set in the Faculty of Information Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid. It managed to attract critical attention at the Berlin Film Festival and won seven Goyas, including best film and best new director. In 1997 he made Open your eyes , a science fiction and psychological intrigue film that was made with notable critical success at international festivals such as those in Berlin or Tokyo. Impressed by the film, Tom Cruise acquired the adaptation rights and produced and starred in the adaptation Vanilla Sky (2001).

His third film was The Others (2001), starring Nicole Kidman. It achieved great critical and public success internationally, especially in Spain, where it was the most viewed film of the year, and also in the United States, where it remained among the most viewed for several weeks. It premiered in the official section of the 2001 Venice Festival, won eight Goya awards —including Best Film and Best Director— and was nominated for the European Film Academy Award for Best Film. In 2004 he presented Mar adentro , a real-life account of quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem), where he addressed issues such as euthanasia, abortion or "the right to a dignified life". The film won 14 Goyas, including Best Film and Best Director, and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2004. In 2008 he prepared his next film, initially titled Mists of Time and which finally it was called Agora. The film had leading stars, among others, Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella and was released on October 9, 2009. With a budget of 50 million euros, it is the most expensive Spanish film in history.

He is also the composer of the soundtrack for his films, as well as others such as La lengua de las mariposas directed by José Luis Cuerda and Nobody knows anyone Directed by Mateo Gil.

In 2015, he released his sixth film as a director, Regression, starring Emma Watson and Ethan Hawke.

On September 27, 2019, he premiered his seventh film, While the war lasts, starring Karra Elejalde, Eduard Fernández, Santi Prego and Nathalie Poza. The film was a success at the Spanish box office, collecting almost 13 million euros.

Personal life

He has always been very discreet and jealous of his privacy. Following the premiere of Mar adentro , he spoke of his homosexuality in 2004. Spanish newspapers and publications echoed this. The director was on the cover of Zero and Shangay magazines.

I don't want anyone to come into my privacy. But I can't and I don't want to deny an interview in any magazine, and I don't want to deny my face for the gais. I think it helps normalize the situation and besides I don't want to go into the ambiguous game of "yes, but no". It's as easy as saying you're gay and that's it.

Alejandro Amenábar.

In 2015 she married David Blanco, although they separated in 2018 and signed their divorce in 2019.

Assessment

Although he is a very popular author, he has not escaped the harshest criticism. The critic Jordi Costa considers it the epitome of "a cinematographic model based on the simulation of talent, technical competence and the suffocation of the Dionysian".

Influences

His films show the influence of various literary and cinematographic sources, as the author himself has acknowledged on occasion. He has declared his admiration for the great filmmakers who have cultivated more and better genres such as thriller, suspense, intrigue or science fiction, among others, he admires Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Jacques Tourneur, Stanley Kubrick or Roman Polanski.

• From Thesis, thriller with which he debuted, it has been said that he has a clear precedent Peeping Tom British director Michael Powell.
• In Open your eyes argumental and narrative elements of Diabolic planJohn Frankenheimer, or Orson Welles' masterpiece, Citizen Kaneas well as Philip K. Dick's novel, Ubik, written 30 years earlier ^{[chuckles]required]}.
• The inspiration of your feature film The others can be traced easily Another twistHenry James's story.

Filmography

As director and screenwriter

• 1991 - The head (short)
• 1992 - The strange obsession of Dr. Morbius (short)
• 1992 - Himenopter (short)
• 1994 - Moon (short)
• 1996 - Thesis
• 1997 - Open your eyes
• 2001 - The others
• 2004 - Sea in
• 2009 - Agora
• 2013 - I love (Nancys Rubias) (videoclip)
• 2015 - Return
• 2015 - Okay. (commercial short film for the Star Damm brewing company)
• 2017 - Danielle (commercial short film for Christmas lottery)
• 2019 - As long as the war lasts
• 2021 - The Fortune (TV series for Movistar+)

As a producer

• 2004 - Sea in
• 2010 - Evil stranger

As a composer

• 1991 - The strange obsession of Dr. Morbius (short)
• 1992 - Himenopter (short)
• 1994 - Moon (short)
• 1996 - Thesis
• 1997 - Open your eyes
• 1999 - The language of the butterflies
• 1999 - Nobody knows anybody.
• 2001 - The others
• 2004 - Sea in
• 2019 - As long as the war lasts

As an actor

• 1991 - The head (short)
• 1992 - The strange obsession of Dr. Morbius (short)
• 1992 - Himenopter (short)
• 1994 - Moon (short)
• 1997 - Open your eyes (cameo)
• 2009 - Spanish Movie (cameo)

Funds

The most important collections of his films in Spain were:

• The others (7 September 2001) (27.254.163 ك)
• Agora (9 October 2009) (21.391.198 €)
• Sea in (3 September 2004) (19.837.473 €)
• As long as the war lasts (September 27, 2019) (11.022.100 €)
• Return (2 October 2015) (8.956.405 €)
• Open your eyes (19 December 1997) (6.442.535 θ)
• Thesis (12 April 1996) (2.647.325 θ)

Television

In 2019, production began on a six-episode television miniseries for Movistar+ that adapts the comic The Treasure of the Black Swan and will be directed by Alejandro Amenábar. This project will mean the entry of the director in the production of series for television.

The album The Treasure of the Black Swan with drawings by Paco Roca and a script by Guillermo Corral was published in 2018 and reconstructs the story of the Spanish frigate Nuestra Señora de la Mercedes, which was sunk in 1804 off the coast of Portugal, by British ships that tried to steal its cargo of gold and silver coins and on the other hand it also narrates the attempt of an American treasure hunting company to seize this treasure and the consequent judicial process between the Spanish Government and the company, which resulted in the return of the treasure to Spain in 2012.

• Fortune (ministry) (#0, 2021)

Awards and nominations

Oscar Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Goya Awards

European Film Awards

Venice International Film Festival

Independent Spirit Awards

Medals of the Film Writers Circle

Sitges Film Festival

Tokyo International Film Festival

BAFTA Awards

Other awards

• In 2011 he received a Star at Paseo de la Fama in Madrid.
• In 1994 its third short Moon receives the Luis García Berlanga Award for the best script and award for the best soundtrack of the AICA.
• In 1992 Himenopter gets the Best Short Prize at the Film Festivals of Elche and Carabanchel.
• In 1991 he received the Amateurs (AICA) Independent Film Association Award for his first short film The head.

Regular collaborators