Jaume Balagueró

Born on November 3, 1968, in Lleida, Jaume Balagueró soon moved with his family to Barcelona, ​​where he has lived most of his life. As a child he was fascinated by the film Cría cuervos , by Carlos Saura , which made him dream of making a career in the cinema. After studying Communication Sciences, he enrolled in cinema at the Center for Cinematographic Studies of Catalonia. For a while, he worked as a journalist on Radio Hospitalet, in the program ‘La froth of the days’.

A fan of hard rock and jazz, he has also always been passionate about terror, in its bloodiest and darkest branches. That is why he founded the magazine Zineshock, about ‘trash’ and B-series movies. But Balagueró was determined to try to make a name for himself as a director. He tried his luck in the field of short films, first with works made with very little means, El niño bubónico (1993) and La invención de la leche (1993).

You could already tell that he had some experience as a director when he shot Alicia (1994) in 35 mm , where he also worked as a screenwriter, producer and even editor. With black and white images indebted to the cinema of David Lynch , it told the surreal story of a girl about to have her period, who is kidnapped by two fly-men. It won the award for best short at the Sitges Festival. His next short film, Días sin luz , stars a boy who narrates in the first person the most unpleasant experiences of his unfortunate life.

Balagueró demonstrated his qualities for the fantasy horror genre with Los sin nombre , his first feature, which adapted “La secta sin nombre”, a novel by Ramsey Campbell . A traumatized woman receives a call from someone claiming to be her long-dead daughter. Starring Karra Elejalde and Tristán Ulloa , it was full of suggestive images. Possibly suggested by the story they were filming, the technicians assure that paranormal events occurred in the Terrassa hospital where they filmed. “The team members went to the bathroom two by two,” recalls Balagueró.

Next, Julio Fernández, from Filmax, produces two feature films shot in English, with an eye on the international market. Anna Paquin stars in Darkness , and Calista Flockhart in the film Fragile . Full of references to other films, and with moments of great tension, the truth is that they are two somewhat bland films that do not achieve the desired impact. The production company also puts Jaume Balagueró and his friend Paco Plaza at the helm of OT: the movie, a documentary about the tour of the young singers from the successful television program “Operación Triunfo”. “I remember that shoot with a smile. We had a great time”, comments the director, who doesn’t regret this ‘commissioned’ project.

Balagueró achieves one of his best works in the field of television, with To enter to live , starring Macarena Gómez , the filmmaker’s girlfriend. It is a thriller about a couple who, looking for a flat, come across a dangerous psychopath. The film is part of the series Películas para no dormir , which brought together similar works by Spanish filmmakers related to terror.

His greatest film success was Rec , directed again with Paco Plaza, with images supposedly filmed by the cameraman who follows a journalist who is doing a report on some firefighters who go to a building full of people affected by a strange virus. “This is a film that was born with an experimental vocation. We wanted to try new narrative forms that would allow the viewer to get into the plot and experience it live in a real way. We wanted to experience a pressure-free way of riding”, Balagueró himself told me. He exalted the actress Manuela Velasco , and came to have a remake in English entitled Quarantine , and a sequel, Rec 2 , again shot by him together with Plaza.

After While You Sleep , another genre film in which Luis Tosar plays the doorman of a building, Balagueró is preparing to resume the Rec franchise . Now, Paco Plaza is directing Rec Genesis , the prequel, and Balagueró himself is directing Rec Apocalypse , the conclusion of the saga.