Jaume Balagueró

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Jaume Balagueró (2009)

Jaume Balagueró (born November 2, 1968 in Lleida , Spain ) is a Spanish director , film producer and screenwriter . Alongside Alejandro Amenábar, he is considered the best-known Spanish genre director and made a name for himself through horror films such as Darkness (2002) and Fragile (2005), in which he draws on internationally renowned actors such as Calista Flockhart , Giancarlo Giannini , Lena Olin and Anna Paquin could.

biography

Training and first short films

Jaume Balagueró was born in 1968 in Lleida, Catalonia. At a young age he moved with his family to Barcelona and later attended the Autonomous University there . There he studied communication science . After completing his master’s degree, Balagueró began his apprenticeship with the Argentine film director Héctor Fáver , who brought him closer to photography and camera direction . From 1992 Balagueró worked as a journalist on several film magazines. In the same year he acted as editor and co-editor of the cinema magazine Zineshock , which dealt with dark cinema and alternative culture. Between 1993 and 1995 Balagueró hosted the program La espuma de los días at Ràdio L'Hospitalet, where he also made a name for himself as a film critic. He made his first steps as a director with the short films El niño bubónico (1991) and La invención de la leche (1993).

Balagueró achieved his first success as a short film director in 1994 with the surrealist work Alicia , for which he also wrote the screenplay. In the eight-minute black and white film, the Spanish filmmaker portrays the brutal kidnapping of a young woman. The critics praised the impressive and at the same time terrifying imagery and drew comparisons to David Cronenberg and David Lynch . The work, shot on 35mm film , received the award for best short film at the Catalan Film Festival Sitges . A year later Balagueró directed the short film Days without Light , which was only released on DVD in Germany and Spain . Days without Light tells the story of a boy who loses both parents and is taken in by a strange foster family. When his adoptive father dies at the hands of his wife, the boy is forced to take his place from now on. The short film won the audience award three years after its creation at the Sweden Fantastic Film Festival . In 1996 Balagueró directed and wrote the screenplay for the twelfth episode of the Nova Ficció series , La Ciutat de la Sort , which was broadcast on the Catalan television channel TV3 .

Movies and television work

Four years after his last short film, Days without Light , the Spanish filmmaker made his feature film debut in 1999. The Nameless is based on a work by the British horror novelist John Ramsey Campbell , which Balagueró adapted for the screen and also co-produced. In the thriller, the plot of which has been relocated to Spain, the publisher Claudia (played by Emma Vilarasau ) is confronted with the death of her daughter. Years later, the single woman receives mysterious calls from a girl posing as her deceased daughter. The Nameless , cast in other roles with Karra Elejalde and Tristán Ulloa , was in the favor of critics because of its gloomy images and threatening atmosphere, which was reinforced with nightmarish, surreal cutscenes. The film won numerous awards in 2000, including the Golden Raven at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival , the Special Jury Prize at the Gérardmer Film Festival and the Director's Prize at the Sitges Festival.

In 2002 Jaume Balagueró directed the 90-minute documentary OT: la película , for which he accompanied young musicians on their tour for several weeks. The artists, including David Bisbal , belonged to the successful Spanish casting show Operación Triunfo , which identified the Spanish participants for the Eurovision Song Contest 2002 . In the same year, Balagueró's second feature film, Darkness, followed , for which he was able to engage international actors Anna Paquin and Lena Olin and was supported by the US production company Dimension Films . In the horror film, shot in English in Spain, the director and screenwriter relied on creating a threatening atmosphere, as with The Nameless , again with the gloomy images of his cameraman Xavi Giménez and the film composer Carles Cases . With the film, which is about an American family who is faced with mysterious events in a lonely house in the Spanish hinterland, Balagueró was able to build on the success of The Nameless . Darkness is now one of the cult films of the horror genre and has received nominations for the Spanish Goya film award , the Fantasporto Festival and the Sitges Festival.

In 2005 Balagueró provided the film script for The Nun , the cautiously received feature film debut by Luis De La Madrid , who had worked as a film editor on Balagueró's two previous films. The Nun tells the story of a demonic nun who haunts a group of former students. This was followed by Balagueró's third feature film, Fragile , which he directed again with the assistance of his preferred cameraman Xavi Giménez, but with a more optimistic ending. In the horror film, a ghost of a girl haunts a children's hospital that is about to close. Fragile , with Calista Flockhart , Richard Roxburgh and Gemma Jones in the leading roles internationally and again filmed in English in Spain, received the 2006 Spanish Goya film award for the best special effects. That same year, in October, Jaume Balagueró announced that he was working on a series of films planned for television inspired by Chicho Ibáñez-Serrador's 1964-1982 television series Historias para no dormir . Under the title Películas para no dormir , he will direct six television films belonging to the horror genre together with Mateo Gil , Álex de la Iglesia , Francisco Plaza and Enrique Urbizu, among others . Balagueró's contribution Para entrar a vivir was completed in 2006. It tells the story of a wedding when the pregnant bride (played by Ruth Díaz ) finds shelter in a house near her real estate agent during a storm.

In 2007, Balagueró presented his fourth feature film, REC , which he made together with the director and screenwriter Paco Plaza, who also worked in the horror genre, in the style of a news report. Following on from the works of the well-known filmmaker George A. Romero , the Spanish film production accompanies the television crew of a night magazine that, during a supposedly routine fire service in an old town house, encounters the disfigured victims of an apocalyptic plague. Praised by the German film service as an “effective staged film” , which makes use of different horror film subgenres and rapid changes of mood, the directors duo relied on largely unknown actors and improvisation. The success of REC , which was awarded prizes at various festivals, led to the Hollywood remake Quarantine (2008) by John Erick Dowdle a year later , in which Jennifer Carpenter played the role of the struggling news reporter Angela Vidal. In 2009, Balagueró and Plaza presented a sequel, REC 2 , at the 66th Venice Film Festival .

Like the Japanese director Hideo Nakata , Balagueró prefers to base his horror films around female protagonists, as he perceives them to be more complex, more interesting and more mysterious than the main male characters. The filmmaker, who also played a supporting role in David Alcaldes' short film Dr. Curry acted, lives in Barcelona. In 2014 he contributed the script for REC 4: Apocalypse and took over the direction of the film. As in part 1 and 3, Manuela Velasco , who embodied the reporter Ángela Vidal for the third time, also took on the leading role.

Filmography (selection)

Director

Screenwriter

producer

Awards

Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival

  • 2008: Silver Scream Award for REC

Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival

  • 2000: Golden Raven in the Best Film category for The Nameless

Butaca Awards

  • 2000: Nominated in the category of Best Catalan Film for The Nameless

European film award

  • 2008 : nominated for the audience award for REC

Fant-Asia Film Festival

  • 2000: Best international film for The Nameless
  • 2008: 2nd place in the categories of Best European, North and South American Film and Fantasia Ground-Breaker Award for REC

Fantafestival

  • 2000: Best Film for The Nameless

Fantastic postage

  • 2000: Best Director and Critic Award, nominated in the Best Picture category for The Nameless
  • 2003: nominated in the category Best Film for Darkness
  • 2008: Best film and audience award for REC

Gérardmer Film Festival

  • 2000: Ciné-Live Award , Grand Prize of the Youth Jury , International Critics' Prize and Special Prize of the Jury for The Nameless
  • 2008: Special Jury Prize , Audience Prize and Grand Prize of the Youth Jury for REC

Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival

  • 2000: Special Jury Prize for The Nameless

Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya

  • 1994: Best Short Film for Alicia
  • 2000: Grand Prix of European Fantasy Films in Gold and Silver, nominated in the category Best Film for The Nameless
  • 2002: nominated in the category Best Film for Darkness
  • 2007: Best Director , Audience Award , José Luis Guarner Critique Award and Silver Grand Prize for European Fantasy Films for REC

Sweden Fantastic Film Festival

  • 1998: Audience Award for Best Short Film for Days without Light

Turia Awards

  • 2008: Special award for REC

Web links

Commons : Jaume Balagueró  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b cf. Hamdorf, Wolfgang: [REC] . In: film service 10/2008
  2. ↑ cf. Interview ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at timeout.com (English; accessed November 2, 2008) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.timeout.com
  3. ↑ Exclusive: Jaume Balagueró Talks REC 4: Apocalypse
  4. ↑ '[REC] 4: Apocalypse' Is Already On Amazon Instant
personal data
SURNAME Balagueró, Jaume
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish director, film producer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd November 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Lleida , Catalonia , Spain