Carlos Saura, essential director of Spanish cinema, dies at the age of 91

Carlos Saura was going to receive the Goya de Honor 2023 tomorrow for his important contributions to Spanish cinema throughout a lifetime, but we have to say goodbye to him sooner than we expected: the director passed away this Friday, February 10, due to respiratory failure, as reported by El País. With just turned 91, Saura leaves our cinema orphaned by one of his greatest references, our last great classic director. The president of the Academy, Fernando Méndez-Leite, justified his honorary Goya by alluding to “his extensive and highly personal creative contribution to the history of Spanish cinema from the late 1950s to today.”

Born in Huesca in 1932 and become one of the most important directors of Spanish cinema, Carlos Saura began his career in the field of documentary with ‘Cuenca’ in 1958 and made his debut in fiction with ‘Los golfos’ in 1960, a film thanks to which he was able to work with Pere Portabella and Mario Camus, meet Luis Buñuel and travel internationally. It was the beginning of an idyll with the seventh art that would last for more than six decades, until reaching his most recent film released on February 3, 2023, ‘The walls speak’. This is a testament to the tireless spirit and creative genius of the director and screenwriter: a week before his death he was releasing his work in theaters, a documentary about the evolution of wall art, from prehistoric caves to graffiti. Curiosity is an essential requirement to push the limits of art, also in cinema.

Saura will be remembered for films like ‘La caza’ (1966), awarded at the Berlin Festival and the first collaboration with the producer Elías Querejeta, with whom he would also premiere titles such as ‘Peppermint frappé’ (1967), ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ (1970) and ‘Ana and the wolves’ (1973), ‘Cousin Angélica’ (1974), among others. I would also add to that list the famous ‘Cría cuervos’ (1976), starring Ana Torrent and Geraldine Chaplin and considered one of the best films in Spanish cinema.. With some and many other films, Saura had to avoid Franco’s censorship, which prevented him from exercising his profession in freedom and prevented the progress of several of his projects.

The legacy of Carlos Saura, in which his Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film shone for ‘Mamá cumples 100 años’ (1979), a black comedy and enormous box office success, continued in the field of the musical genre with films such as ‘Bodas de blood’ (1981), where he adapted the work of Federico García Lorca, ‘Carmen’ (1983) and ‘El amor brujo’ (1986), and through the 80s and 90s he would consolidate creative relationships and find her great success at the Goya Awards: ‘¡Ay, Carmela!’ 1990, co-written by Rafael Azcona, was a box office success and one of the films with the most Goya awards in the history of the awards with a total of 13 big heads. In 2023 he would have collected the Goya de Honor in the 37th edition of the awards, but unfortunately it will have to be posthumous.

Saura was internationally recognized with the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival for the film ‘Deprisa, deprisa’ (the first Spaniard to achieve it and the only one until Carla Simón’s victory in 2022 for ‘Alcarràs), in addition to two Silver Bear for best direction. He was also the winner of the Grand Jury Prize on two occasions at the Cannes Film Festival and, of course, he won the Golden Shell of honor at the San Sebastián Film Festival. In addition, the director has opted for an Oscar up to three times, two for Spain and one for Argentina.

With an absolutely dazzling career, emblematic titles and essential collaborations for the history of our cinema, Carlos Saura said goodbye this February 10, 2023 at the age of 91, days before the premiere at the Teatro Infanta Isabel in Madrid of the play ‘Lorca por Saura’ in which the filmmaker was going to direct this play written by Natalia Grueso and starring India Martínez in her debut as an actress. Even so, it will continue to be a benchmark for those who are here and those who will come, for a Spanish cinema that is in mourning this weekend.