Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish and Mexican 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 works were known for their avant-garde surrealism which were also infused with political commentary.

Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel's career spanned the 1920s through the 1970s. He collaborated with prolific surrealist painter Salvador Dali on ''Un Chien Andalou'' (1929) and ''L'Age d'Or'' (1930). Both films are considered masterpieces of surrealist cinema. From 1947 to 1960, he honed his skills as a director 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 then 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 at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. He then criticized political and social conditions in ''The Exterminating Angel'' (1962) and ''The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'' (1972), the latter of which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He also directed ''Diary of a Chambermaid'' (1964) and ''Belle de Jour'' (1967). His final film, ''That Obscure Object of Desire'' (1977), 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 twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968 and 1972. Seven of Buñuel's films are included in ''Sight & Sound'' 2012 critics' poll of the top 250 films of all time. Buñuel's obituary in ''The New York Times'' called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later." Provided by Wikipedia