Directing
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (Spanish: [ˈlwis βuˈɲwel poɾtoˈles]; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Buñuel's work was known for its avant-garde surrealism which was also infused with political commentary and social satire.
Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel made films from the 1920s through the 1970s. He collaborated with prolific surrealist painter Salvador Dali creating the films Un Chien Andalou (1929), which was made in the silent era and L'Age d'Or (1930). The two films are seen as the birth of Cinematic surrealism. From 1947 to 1960 he developed his skills as a director filming in Mexico making grounded and human melodramas such as Gran Casino (1947), Los Olvidados (1950), and Él (1953). Here is where he gained the fundamentals of storytelling.
Buñuel than transitioned into making artful, unconventional, surrealist, and political satirical films. He earned acclaim with the morally complex arthouse drama film Viridiana (1961) which criticized the Francoist dictatorship. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. He then criticized political and social conditions in The Exterminating Angel (1962), and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise (1972) the later of which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. He also directed Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), and Belle de Jour (1967), as well as his final film That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) the later of which earned the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director.
Buñuel earned five Cannes Film Festival prizes, two Berlin International Film Festival prizes, and a BAFTA Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards. Buñuel received numerous honors including National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Fine Arts in 1977, the Moscow International Film Festival Contribution to Cinema Prize in 1979, and the Career Golden Lion in 1982. He was nominated once for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. Seven of Buñuel's films are included in Sight & Sound's 2012 critics' poll of the top 250 films of all time.
Filmography
Browse movies and TV shows featuring Luis Buñuel
Reflets de Cannes
Belle de Jour
Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alo...
Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma
Produced for television by Claude-Jean Philippe, the « Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma », recounts the his...
Un Chien Andalou
Un Chien Andalou is an European avant-garde surrealist film, a collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and S...
The Phantom of Liberty
This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based...
L'Âge d'or
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story o...
The Milky Way
Two men, part tramp, part pilgrim, are on their way from France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. On their wa...
There Are No Thieves in This Village
When a young boy steals billiard balls from a local saloon, a stranger is charged with the crime. The local lay...
Speaking of Buñuel
Surrealist master Luis Buñuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such groundbreakin...
Le Fantôme de Laurent Terzieff
Laurent Terzieff was more than a good actor, after having been a real "star" in the cinema, through his profess...
Constel·lació Portabella
Constel·lació Portabella traces the exciting life of the great Catalan film director and artist Pere Portabella...
Catherine Deneuve, belle et bien là
Catherine Deneuve couldn’t care less about being a celebrity, but fame made her an icon long ago and she occupi...
The Proud and the Beautiful
Life in a small Mexican village where joy and misery, hope and pain, passion and guilt, love and decay, life an...
Carmen
Feyder's scenario very closely follows Don José's own account of his story and his fatal relation with the gyps...
Jeanne Moreau: Free Spirit
An account of the life of actress Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017), a true icon of the New Wave and one of the most id...
Deneuve, la reine Catherine
She is said to be cold, secretive and mysterious. She has the reputation of not letting anything of her intimat...
Montparnasse
Come take an avant-garde walk in the Montparnasse of the late 1920's. This district of Paris, filmed in a most...
Buñuel in Hollywood
This documentary traces the relationship of Buñuel with American culture and Hollywood. The program proposes a...
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A surreal film about surrealism.
The Life and Times of Don Luis Buñuel
Made a year after Luis Buñuel's death in 1983 this is an illuminating portrait of the surreal and visionary dir...
Weeping for a Bandit
José María "El Tempranillo" fleeing from justice, takes refuge in Sierra Morena. After a period of hard learnin...
Buñuel
Completed a year after his death in 1983, this program presents the definitive biography of Spain’s renowned Su...
Luis Buñuel : Un cinéaste de notre temps
An overview of Luis Buñuel's career. Includes an interview with the filmmaker.
Tras Nazarin: Following Nazarin
"Nazarín is a Quixote of the priesthood " "Among the films I have made in Mexico, Nazarin is one that I prefer....
Fall of a Body
The body of a young woman falls on the terrace of Martha, who intrigued, meets her neighbor. In contact with th...
Mauprat
Romantic novelist George Sand's Mauprat as adapted by cinema visionary Jean Epstein. As a child, orphan Bernard...
The Incredible Mr. Piccoli
A captivating portrait of French actor Michel Piccoli, who has worked with the greatest filmmakers of his time...
Les paradoxes de Buñuel
Famed film director Luis Bunuel (1900-1983) is the subject of this French documentary, with anecdotal interview...
A Mexican Buñuel
A documentary covering the years Luis Buñuel spent in Mexico making films.
Discovering Buñuel
Luis Bunuel, the father of cinematic Surrealism, made his film debut with 'Un Chien Andalou' in 1929 working cl...
The Castaway on the Street of Providence
Friends of Luis Buñuel discuss the director while Buñuel mixes drinks and entertains friends in his home.
Memoria de Los Olvidados
Javier Espada's documentary about the making of Bunuel's masterpiece "Los Olvidados".