Tuesday, February 16, 2016

The Auteurs #51: Alejandro Amenabar




Among one of the finest figures in Spanish cinema, Alejandro Amenabar is a filmmaker who arrived during a new wave of Spanish filmmakers to emerge in the 1990s. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Amenabar is a filmmaker who delves into stories of struggle and darkness whether it’s those dealing with death or those dealing with the ideas of death itself. Even as they’re presented with a sense of style and intrigue that lesser filmmakers wouldn’t dare to do. With a long-awaited return in 2015 with the genre that had made him a major name in cinema, Amenabar is still considered one of Spain’s great filmmakers.

Born in Santiago, Chile on March 31, 1972 to Hugo Ricardo Amenabar and Josefina Cantos, Alejandro Fernando Amenabar Cantos was the youngest of two sons that included his brother Ricardo born three years earlier as the young Amenabar spent a year living in Santiago before he and the family moved to Madrid, Spain where his mother was born. After a few years, the family moved to the nearby Paracuellos de Jarama near Madrid where the young Amenabar became interested in books and art at an early age. While the family never had a television, Amenabar would often go to the cinema where he would discover films as he would become a student at Madrid’s Complutense University. Though he didn’t finish school, he would meet several individuals who would become key fixtures in his career such as writer Mateo Gil, news journalist Carlos Montero, and a young actor in Eduardo Noriega.

More can be read here at Cinema Axis.

© thevoid99 2016

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