Fernando Méndez-Leite

Film director. He was Director General for Cinema (ICAA) at the Ministry of Culture between 1986 and 1988, before founding the Madrid Film School, which he directed between 1994 and 2012. Since its creation, he has been a member of the Steering Committee of the Malaga Film Festival and since June 2022 he has been President of Spain’s Film Academy.

A graduate in Law, he studied Screenwriting and Direction at the Official School of Cinematography. At the age of 23 he began working as an assistant director at TVE and from 1971 onwards as a full director. From 1972 to 1975 he was responsible for the weekly cultural programmes ‘Galería’ and ‘Cultura 2’, and from 1975 onwards he directed the fictions ‘Niebla’, ‘El club de los suicidas’, ‘El rey monje’, ‘Sonata de estio’ and ‘El fiel guardián’, and the children’s fiction series ‘Jueves locos’ and ‘Los fragmentos’. At the same time, he wrote reviews for the film magazines ‘Film Ideal’, ‘Reseña’ and ‘Dirigido por’ and for the newspapers ‘Pueblo’ and ‘Diario 16’. In addition, between 1968 and 1981 he was a professor of Film Theory and History of Contemporary Cinema at the University of Valladolid, and between 1992 and 2010 he was the permanent film critic of Madrid’s La Guía del Ocio.

In 1980 he directed the feature film ‘Man of Fashion’, and later authored feature documentaries such as ‘El Productor’ (2005, about Elías Querejeta), ‘¡Ay, Carmen!’ (2018, about Carmen Maura) and ‘La corte de Ana’ (2020, about Ana Belén). In 1994 he wrote the script and directed the TVE series ‘La regenta’, based on the novel by Leopoldo Alas ‘Clarín’.

He has published the books ‘Historia del cine español en 100 películas’ (1985), ‘Concha Velasco’ (1986), ‘El cine de José Luis Cuerda’ (2002) and ‘Biznagas’ (2022). From its beginning until today he has been part of the team of collaborators and commentators of the TVE show ‘Historia del cine español’, and between 1984 and 1986 he directed ‘La noche del cine español’. He has served as juror at the film festivals of Montreal, Karlovy Vary, Moscow, Monte Carlo, Biarritz, Marseille, Malaga, Valladolid, Gijón, Mostra de Valencia, Huelva, Cinema Jove, Lorca, Almería, Huesca and Tudela.

In 2022 he received the Golden Biznaga for his work at the Malaga Film Festival and that same year he was elected president of Spain’s Film Academy, with Rafael Portela and Susi Sánchez as vice-presidents. In 2023 he published his first novel, ‘Fracaso sentimental en la calle 50’, which covers six decades of Spanish life and a week in New York with an ironic and unorthodox perspective.