Enrique Urbizu

Born in Bilbao in 1962, Enrique Urbizu Jáuregui graduated in Information Sciences, Advertising branch, from the University of the Basque Country. Since he was little, he has been fond of straight-line comics, especially Tintin.

He made his film debut in 1988 with Your girlfriend is crazy , a sitcom close to vaudeville starring Amaya, a director of an advertising company, who is torn between two men. Urbizu is inspired by the ‘screwball comedy’ of the 30s, although she is much more reminiscent of the films of the time by Spanish directors such as Fernando Colomo and Fernando Trueba . “It’s shot on a set set. We then decided that, since it was going to be false anyway, it would be better for it to appear completely false, so we even painted the exteriors a bit to make them seem more false”, comments the director.

More interesting is undoubtedly Todo por la pasta , for which he had the collaboration of a then very young Alex de la Iglesia, who was in charge of the artistic direction. After a robbery at a bingo hall, the girlfriend of one of the criminals manages to escape and tries to recover the loot with the help of another woman. The film is a breath of fresh air in the moth-eaten Spanish cinema, and is the precedent for the arrival of Alejandro Amenábar and a new generation that would completely renew the scene. She won the Goya for best supporting actress ( Kiti Manver ).

Despite the fact that this film was somewhat successful, it is not easy for Urbizu to find financing for new projects, and he has to agree to direct two adaptations of books by this producer’s wife, Carmen Rico Godoy , for Andrés Vicente Gómez : How to be unhappy and disfrutarlo and Cuernos de mujer , the sequels to How to be a woman and not die trying , which had been directed by Ana Belén . Although he does a very professional job and has an inspired Carmen Maura , the scripts have little substance and interest, which is why they represent a clear setback in his filmography.

He will return to the cinema that he really wants to shoot with Cachito , a failed ‘road movie’ with moments of interest, based on a work by Arturo Pérez-Reverte . He also worked as a screenwriter in the adaptation of one of the most emblematic novels by this author, “The Dumas Club”, which gave rise to The Ninth Door , which despite being directed by Roman Polanski , was a huge disappointment.

Urbizu spent a long time, about seven years, without directing, and although he tried by all means to make the novel “Esos cielos”, by Bernardo Atxaga , a movie, he could not find financing. The rage for not getting the money inspires him to make a film about a bank robbery, and he ends up co-writing La caja 507 with Michel Gaztambide , his best work. Locked in a security chamber by some robbers, the director of a bank branch will discover papers that show that the forest fire in which his daughter lost her life was not accidental. The film is not only a good example of the best film noir, but also denounced property speculation. Antonio ResinesHe did a good job as the protagonist, although the surprise was given by an unexpected José Coronado , better than ever as the villain of the film.

Urbizu took advantage of José Coronado’s acting improvement, placing him as the protagonist of La vida mancha , in which the actor plays a mysterious guy who, after many years whereabouts unknown, ends up at his brother’s house, married with a child.

But Urbizu continues to have problems getting his films off the ground. Although she filmed for television Guess who I am , from the series Movies to not sleep , about the friendship between a girl and a vampire, she has gone seven years without a new film. She goes back behind the scenes with the thriller There will be no peace for the wicked , again with José Coronado. It will be “contemporary film noir, dealing with certain hidden connections and the individuals who determine who lives and who dies”, in the director’s words. Since 2006, Urbizu has been vice president of the Spanish Film Academy.