Carlos Saura

Spanish director, screenwriter and producer. His interest in cinema began when he was very young. His mother, who was pianist, instilled in him the taste for music, and his borther, Antonio, who was a painter, the love for art. In his adolescence, he began to practice photography, and in 1950 he made his first feature films made with a 16mm camera. Carlos Saura is an excellent photographer, activity that he does from time to time in between filmmaking.

At an early age, he moved to Madrid to continue a career in Industrial Engineering, but his vocation for photography, film and journalism made him drop out of school and enroll at the Institute for Film Research and Studies. Sporadically, he combined his film studies with courses from the School of Journalism. In 1957, he ended his studies and obtained a degree as film director with the short film La tarde del domingo. In 1959, he filmed Los Golfos (1962). In this film he tried to create a type of Spanish neorealism by addressing juvenile crime in the slums of Madrid from a sociologic viewpoint. In his first stage as director, he tried to position himself in favor of the outcasts and he made both lyrical and documentary films.

Saura is a well-accepted director both national and internationally, and as a proof of that, he obtained a lot of prizes, among them: Silver Bear in the Berlinale for La Caza, in 1965; and, for Peppermint Frappé, in 1967. Special jury awards in Cannes for La Prima Angélica, in 1973; and for Cría Cuervos, in 1975. In addition, the movie Mamá obtained an Oscar nomination in 1979 as Best Foreign Film, also won the Special Jury Prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival. In 1990, he won two Goyas for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director.

Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara