Álex de la Iglesia

He was born in Bilbao in 1965. He graduated in Philosophy from the University of Deusto and took his first steps in film as an art director in titles by Pablo Berger and Enrique Urbizu. He made his directorial debut in 1991 with the short ‘Mirindas Asesinas’, and two years later El Deseo produced his first feature film, ‘Mutant Action’, which won three Goya awards.

His second film, ‘The Day of the Beast’ (1995), established him as one of the most important directors of Spanish cinema and won six Goya awards, among them the one for Best Director. His filmography includes titles as ‘Dance with the Devil’(1997), ‘Dead of Laughter’ (1999), ‘Common Wealth’ (2000), ‘800 Bullets’ (2002), ‘Ferpect Crime’(2004) or ‘The Oxford Murders’ (2007).

In 2010 he premiered ‘The Last Circus’ at the Venice Film Festival, where the jury chaired by Quentin Tarantino awarded the film with the prize for Best Screenplay and the Silver Lion for Best Direction. A year later he filmed ‘As Luck Would Have It’ and in 2013 he released ‘Witching and Bitching’, the winner of eight Goyas and two Silver Fotogramas.

He has directed sketches for TV shows like Gran Wyoming’s ‘El peor programa de la semana’ and ‘Inocente Inocente’, as well as the series ‘Plutón B.R.B. Nero’ (2008) for La 2.In 2014

he directed the documentary ‘Messi’ and produced the thriller ‘Shrews’ with his own production company Pokeepsie Films.

His filmography as a director includes other films such as ’My Big Night’ (2015),’The Bar’ ‘(2016) and ‘Perfect Strangers’ (2017), in 2020 he directed the series ‘30 Coins’ for HBO, and reciently he premiered at the Sitges Festival ‘Venecia frenia’, his latest film.

Through Pokeepsie Films, he has shaped films like ‘The Heroes of Evil’ (Zoe Berriatúa, 2015), ‘Skins’ (Eduardo Casanova, 2017), ‘Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil’ (Paul Urkijo Alijo, 2017) and ‘70 Big Ones’ (Koldo Serra, 2018). And as a writer he has published the novels ‘Payasos en la lavadora’ (1997) and ‘Recuérdame que te odie’ (2014). In 2010 he was recognized with the National Film Award.