Director of Spanish cinema born in Madrid, winner of the Oscar to the best foreign production in 1993 by Belle Époque.

He studied Sciences of the Information and he worked like cinema critic before making debut with prime Opera (1980), success of immediate public and beginning of the sort known like “Madrilenian comedy”, that bloomed in the decade of 1980. In the same line it makes Salt fat (1983) and I know unfaithful and you do not watch with whom (1985), this one last adaptation of a vodevil English and produced already, like all its later works, by Andrés Vicente Go'mez. But its prestige outside Spain will begin with the year of the lights (1986), cowritten with the scriptwriter Rafael Azcona and Oso de Plata of the Festival of Berlin.

After the parenthesis of the dream of the crazy monkey (1989), it films police intimist on the novel of Christopher Frank, returns to the comedy with Belle Époque (1992), a great commercial triumph followed by Two much (1995), rolled in the United States and interpreted, among others, by Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. In 2000 it achieved a great success of critic with Street 54, it films documentary on the Latin jazz, and in 2002 it released the spell of Shanghai, cradle in the novel of Juan Marsé.