José Luis Borau

Biography

Spanish film director and producer, born in Zaragoza. He studied law in his hometown and debuted as a film critic in the newspaper El Heraldo de Aragón. In Madrid, he joined the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas. He exerted great influence on the medium from his teaching at the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía. In 1967 he founded the production company El Imán, Cine y Televisión, with which he has financed his own projects and those of other filmmakers. Of his personal work, two films stand out: Furtivos (1975), Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Festival and a great success for its opposition to the limits of censorship at the beginning of the Spanish Transition, and Leo (2000), which won the Goya for best director. However, both his initial commissions, such as the spaghetti western Brandy (1964) and the crime film Crimen de doble filo (1965), and the controversial later films Tata mía (1986) and Niño Nadie (1996), have had little repercussion. Between 1994...