Alex de la Iglesia

Born on December 4, 1965 in Bilbao, Alejandro de la Iglesia Mendoza has always been a fan of fantastic cinema and comics, which helped him escape from some problems, such as the sudden death of his father (a trauma that he bears as best he can). , when he was 12 years old, and the tumultuous situation in the Basque Country in the 1980s, with continuous clashes between the police and ETA supporters. “Every weekend there was a war,” says the filmmaker, who collected rubber balls thrown by the agents. “Now, luckily, it is an idyllic place to walk.”

Passionate about role-playing games and a member of the club from his hometown ‘Los pelotas’ –to practice this type of games–, he became one of the authors of “Infernal Comedy”, an adventure for “The Call of Cthulhu”, one of the most appreciated by fans, based on the personal universe of horror specialist HP Lovecraft . Endowed with a talent for drawing, De la Iglesia began as a comic artist in the amateur magazine ‘La comictiva’.

He has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Deusto. “He spent most of his time in the bar or in the movie club”, the Bilbao native commented jokingly. During those college years he decided to make movies. “I always say that I got into the cinema out of envy. My friend Enrique Urbizu started shooting a movie. At that time, the people who made movies were all serious people, Pilar Miró , Mario Camus, not kids. I thought that to make movies you had to be like that, someone serious and with an official document authorizing you to be a director… But Urbizu’s courage and audacity showed me that someone like me could also make a movie. And there my world broke. I spent a week without sleep telling myself: if I don’t make movies, nothing makes sense. If I don’t make movies, I’ll die…”.

He soon made his first steps in the cinema as artistic director in the short film Mamá , by Pablo Berger , and he also took on the same task in Todo por la pasta , by the aforementioned Urbizu, an unusually dynamic mixture of comedy and thriller in the context of cinema. Spanish of the time, stagnant, and rarely fresh and surprising.

With “fair” savings, he managed to launch his short Mirindas asesinas , although he did not have enough money to pay the actors. Alex Angulo, the protagonist, deserted right away, so the director had to play his character in the missing shots, with his back turned. The result is a hilarious tribute to film noir.

Along with his friend Jorge Guerricaechevarría , his regular collaborator, he wrote the script for his first feature, Acción mutante , and sent it to Pedro Almodóvar himself, taking advantage of the fact that he knew Paz Sufrategui, then press officer for El Deseo and the actor’s cousin. Xavier Camera . Against all odds, the Manchegan filmmaker likes him and proposes that he direct the film. “When Guerricaechevarría and I went to see Almodóvar, we were ready to do what he had asked us to do. If he told us about a whale documentary, we would have done it. We would have even swept the office if necessary”, comments De la Iglesia.

Although it is a first film with more shadows than lights, Mutant Action was quite a declaration of intent, with some funny moments, and a great Antonio Resines as the leader of a band of cripples turned terrorists. At that time, Spanish cinema was for the most part very far from the tastes of the public, and with few honorable exceptions, it had never touched the fantastic genre. And it served for its director to learn the trade by forced marches, although today he regrets how badly it went.

He improved substantially with his next film, The Day of the Bestia , a turning point for the new Spanish cinema. This black comedy, inspired by the role-playing games that the director liked so much, introduced in Spain – long before the advent of directors such as Alejandro Amenábar , Jaume Balagueró and Daniel Monzón – special effects cinema with attractive planning, along the lines of of the great blockbusters of Hollywood. And it made Santiago Segura a celebrity.

Since then, things have not always gone well for him. She failed miserably with Perdita Durango , based on Barry Gifford ‘s novel about the character played by Isabella Rossellini in David Lynch ‘s Wild at Heart . And her mix of drama and comedy in Dead of Laughter didn’t work either. Due to his lack of pretensions, he saves The Community , which is reminiscent of Polanski’s The Chimerical Tenant , but with Carmen Maurasurrounded by the most outlandish neighbors, willing to do anything to prevent her from keeping the fortune that a deceased neighbor kept in his apartment. While her homage to the specialists of the spaghetti-westerns shot in Spain 800 Bullets was totally unsuccessful, Ferpecto Crime , a parody of suspense, has a certain grace.

De la Iglesia tried to completely change the register with a thriller without comic moments, The Oxford Murders , an adaptation of the novel by Guillermo Martínez, with Elijah Wood , John Hurt and Leonor Watling . And although the result is quite irregular –especially in the part related to the character of Leonor Watling– it has a suggestive beginning, and a successful ending, and it worked well at the box office. For television, De la Iglesia has shot The Child’s Room , a surprising episode of the telefilm series “Películas para no dormir”, and the failed comedy series Plutón BRB Nero . He is also the author of the fictional book “Clowns in the washing machine”.

Happily married, Álex de la Iglesia is the father of two girls who have changed his life. “Having two people who depend on you completely transforms you. There is full responsibility. When you are a father, you think first of the girls, of your wife, of what to do to safeguard your family”.

Elected president of the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences in June 2009, Álex de la Iglesia has set out to transform it, fix past mistakes and bring it closer to all viewers. “The Academy as an institution has no ideology, it represents everyone equally. And it is not true that the members have a certain ideological direction, there are some with completely opposing points of view”, the filmmaker commented to José María Aresté, in DeCine21. Along these lines, he did not hesitate to meet with the leader of the Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy, to make it clear that Spanish cinema does not only represent Socialist Party voters. At the first Goya gala held under his mandate, he obtained good audience data, thanks to the signing of Andreu Buenafuenteas a presenter, and managed to get his mentor, Pedro Almodóvar, to come to give an award, after years of quarrels with the Academy.

While waiting for his project to take “The Yellow Mark” to the cinema (one of the most well-rounded comics of the famous characters Blake and Mortimer) to go ahead, Álex de la Iglesia shoots the grotesque comedy Sad Trumpet Ballad , about two clowns in love with the same woman.