Álex de la Iglesia

Info

Full Name: Alejandro de la Iglesia Mendoza
Date of birth: December 4, 1965 (60 years old)
Location: Bilbao
Country: Spain
Height: 1,75m
Redes sociales: X Instagram

Álex de la Iglesia has been active for 33 years, participating in 42 movies that average a 6.1/10 score.

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Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

Few filmmakers have shaped the imagination of modern Spanish cinema quite like Álex de la Iglesia. Born in Bilbao on 4 December 1965, this Basque director graduated in Philosophy from the University of Deusto and came to cinema by way of comics and drawing, never losing the rowdy, excessive eye that turns each of his films into a rollercoaster of black comedy, horror and social satire. His is genre cinema with one foot in the grotesque tradition of Spanish farce and the other in the look of horror comics, able to frighten and amuse you in almost the same shot.

From comics to the big screen

Before stepping behind the camera, De la Iglesia drew strips for fanzines and worked as an art director on other people's productions. His short film 'Mirindas asesinas' (1991) caught the eye of Pedro Almodóvar, whose company El Deseo ended up backing his leap into features with 'Mutant Action' (1993), a wild science fiction dystopia that already announced his universe. The real breakthrough came two years later with 'The Day of the Beast' (1995), a satanic comedy about a priest convinced the Antichrist will be born in Madrid on Christmas night. The film swept up six Goya Awards, including Best Director, and launched Santiago Segura, who took the Goya for Best New Actor. Barely thirty, De la Iglesia was already one of the freest and most recognisable voices in Spanish film.

English ventures and very dark comedies

With screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría as his regular writing partner, he built a filmography as varied as it was personal. He tried his luck in English with 'Perdita Durango' (1997), a savage adaptation of Barry Gifford's novel starring Javier Bardem, Rosie Perez and a young James Gandolfini, and he would shoot in the language again on 'The Oxford Murders' (2008), a mathematical thriller headlined by Elijah Wood and John Hurt. At home he strung together hits such as 'Dying of Laughter' (1999), the claustrophobic ensemble piece 'Common Wealth' (2000), which won Carmen Maura the Goya for Best Actress, his deranged western homage '800 balas' (2002) and the twisty 'Ferpect Crime' (2004). That taste for ensemble comedy and suspense carried on through titles like 'As Luck Would Have It' (2011), 'My Big Night' (2015), 'The Bar' (2017) and 'Perfect Strangers' (2017), before returning to horror with the slasher 'Venicephrenia' (2021) and to comedy with 'The Fourth Passenger' (2022).

The Last Circus, Venice and a love story on set

In 2010 he delivered one of his most ambitious works, 'The Last Circus', a frenzied tale of two clowns in love with the same trapeze artist, set in the dying years of Franco's dictatorship. It brought him international attention with the Silver Lion for Best Director and the Best Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival. That shoot also changed his life: the trapeze artist was the screen debut of Carolina Bang, who would become his partner and, in 2014, his wife. The director, who had been married to Amaya Díez until 2010, is a father of four daughters. He and Bang teamed up again on the riotous 'Witching and Bitching' (2013), another runaway genre party that picked up several technical Goyas.

His influence reached well beyond the screen. In 2009 he was elected president of Spain's Film Academy, and his tenure ended in dramatic fashion: amid a bitter row over a new anti piracy law, he resigned and bowed out with a fiery speech at the 2011 Goya gala in defence of the internet and of a deal that never materialised. The gesture, true to his contrarian streak, summed him up perfectly.

Pokeepsie Films and a move into television

With Carolina Bang he founded Pokeepsie Films, the company through which he has championed a whole new generation of filmmakers alongside his own projects. On television he scored one of the biggest recent horror successes with '30 Coins' (2020), the first Spanish original series for HBO Europe, a cult phenomenon about an exorcist priest whose second season added the American Paul Giamatti to a cast led by Eduard Fernández. He later created the thriller '1992' (2024) for Netflix, set in the Spain of the Seville Expo. As a producer, his stamp sits behind the hugely popular young adult romance trilogy that began with 'My Fault' (2023), continued with 'Your Fault' (2024) and wrapped up in 2025, a romantic sensation that has topped Prime Video charts across much of the world. His career has not gone unrewarded at home either: in 2010 he received Spain's National Cinematography Award, and in 2020 the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts.

Three decades on from that priest hunting the beast, Álex de la Iglesia keeps shooting with the same teenage energy, faithful to a kind of cinema that looks like nobody else's: loud, mischievous, Spanish to the core and, at the same time, wide open to the world. Few directors have managed to make audiences laugh and recoil at once with such ease.