
José Luis Garci
Directing
Biography
José Luis Garci is a Spanish director, producer, film critic, TV presenter, screenwriter and author. He earned worldwide acclaim and his country's first Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award for Begin the Beguine (1982). Four of his films, including also Sesión continua (1984), Asignatura aprobada (1987) and El abuelo (1998), have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, more than any other Spanish director. His films are characterized for his classical style and the underlying sentimentality of their plots.
Known For

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Historias del otro lado

Director José Luis Garci has turned his camera inward on filmmakers and screenwriters to portray them as so self-absorbed in the creative process that there is no other world, no other human relationship that can compete. As José (Adolfo Marsillach) and Federico (Jesus Puente) work together on a new screenplay, their interactions with their family (José's teen daughters, Federico's wife) disappear under the all-consuming task of creation. The daughters give up and go off on their own, and the wife joins a convent while Federico barely notices. And when the producer is interrupted by profound grief at the sudden death of his older son, he almost automatically returns to thinking about the film project when the funeral has ended. Garci honors many great directors at the beginning of this film, and the film continues to play out as an elaboration on this homage -- an illustration both of the dedication and the cost of filmmaking, no judgments given.
Double Feature

This 1985 Spanish film reveals one of the many terrible aspects of 16th century Spain, still plagued by the radical Christian Inquisition, one of a plethora of difficulties Spaniards faced at the time. Spanish super star Carmen Maura plays a nun who agrees to a selfless scam, a fake stigmata, only to avoid separation from her lover, another nun. It's a serious and passionate work, highlighting the theme of outspoken women-against-repression, seen in other good gay and lesbian films. This is not a lesbian "Nun sense" or another "Dark Habits" (by Almodovar, which also starred Carmen Maura, and also set in a Spanish convent, with some lesbian nuns). Perhaps, best of all, 'Extramuros' is realistic and frank. It isn't shy about its characters' sexuality. Their sexuality, and the film as a whole are genuine.
Beyond the Walls

After his son dies, an elderly man comes back to Spain from the US and hopes to find out which of his granddaughters is true, and which one is bastard.
The Grandfather

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Plinio

A man gets trapped inside a telephone box and nobody is able to free him.
The Telephone Box

Andrés, a dowdy Spaniard, goes to Paris on holiday, hoping to meet a pretty French girl. His wishes may come true after meeting Ninette, his landlord's sensual and possessive young daughter.
Ninette

Enrique is a thirty-year-old lawyer who is married to Ana. Apparently he is a normal man who has only one obsession: the commercials. He feels a real passion for the erotic world of the ads either in billboards, trash cans, public transport, magazines or television. The continuous publicity bombardment ends up leading him towards a neurosis that changes his personality.
Vida conyugal sana

A dauntless film director, an enfant terrible in his early days, confrontational with censorship, always pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression, chronicler of the darkest corners of the transition, De la Iglesia will fall into the clutches of drug addiction, being forgotten and sometimes repudiated for more than a decade before eventually shaking off the ostracism to make films once again, that habit he could never kick.
Eloy de la Iglesia: Film Addict

Salva working as security guard in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Madrid. There he meets Leo, a girl who makes a living collecting cardboard. Gradually Salva be falling in love for the young, but the life of Leo holds a dark past.
Leo

A Spanish insurance company is absorbed by a multinational, so that, in order to modernize, its employees are obliged to carry out some training courses to adapt to the new situation and the new objectives. Given the relevance of what is at stake, the wives of these men will also be involved at work.
Los nuevos españoles

Yoyes, the first woman to hold responsibility positions within ETA, returns from exile in Mexico and try to rebuild her life. But her return is not easy.
Yoyes

Set in the future, the story follows a nurse who tries to bring her own style of relief to people condemned to die. Her identity is a mystery and she may not be quite what she seems.
Murder in a Blue World

Yerma is desperate to have children, so when a psychic advises her to look outside her marriage to conceive, what can she say but yes?
Yerma

Film based on the characters of the English writer Arthur Conan Doyle. It tells a hypothetical meeting in Madrid between the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper.
Holmes & Watson: Madrid Days

This movie doesn't have any coherent plot. It's the portrait of the lives of different people in the hard years of post-war in Spain (the 40's), and how they manage to survive in a country desolated by the war. Like other films: La colmena or Roma (Fellini) it shows us lots of characters and some moments of their lives.
Merry-Go-Round c. 1950

Finally, 33 years later, the whole truth behind the attempted coup d'état that shook Spain on the afternoon of February 23, 1981, is revealed by those who lived through those dreadful hours; a deep look behind the heavy curtain which hides the real mastermind, waiting to be unmasked.
Operación Palace
What we tend to identify with the acting profession has little to do with what is really this profession. Thirty-six Spanish actors reflect on their work and contrasted their experiences. As thread, the contrast between the voices of veterans and images of young theater students , for whom everything is still possible. Among the many actors are interviewed Javier Bardem, Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, Carmen Maura, Fernando Fernán Gómez, José Luis López Vázquez, José Coronado, Emma Suarez, Alberto San Juan, Ariadna Gil, Ana Belén, Pilar Lopez de Ayala and many other.
Hécuba: un sueño de pasión

Pablo Nazareno is a 26-year-old guy who works at a science laboratory in a low work. After the mysterious death of one of the employees, weird things start to happen in the laboratory, and Pablo finds out that the lab may close. The arrival of Lucía Navarro, a beautiful computing expert, makes Pablo feel that he MUST discover what is going on in the lab... but this may put him in danger. There is only one thing that can give strength to Pablo: the love he starts to feel by Lucía.
The Revenge

Revolution in Spain, around the events of 2 May 1808, when the people of Madrid rise up in rebellion against French occupation.