Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel Portolés (Spanish: [ˈlwis βuˈɲwel poɾtoˈles]; 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 are known for their avant-garde surrealism which was also infused with political commentary.

Often associated with the surrealist movement, Buñuel's career spanned the 1920s through the 1970s. He collaborated with surrealist painter Salvador Dalí on Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930). Both 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).

Buñuel then transitioned to making artful, surrealistic and satirical films. He earned the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival for Viridiana (1961), which criticized the Francoist dictatorship. He satirized 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). He earned the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director for his final film, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).

Buñuel earned five Cannes Film Festival prizes, two Berlin International Film Festival prizes, a BAFTA Award and an Academy Award in 1972. 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 then in 1972. Seven of Buñuel's films are included in Sight & Sound's 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".