THE DOORS OF WONDER
Born in Bilbao in 1963, Pablo Berger belongs to that class of filmmakers who have built a recognisable universe without shunning dialogue with tradition. His cinema, rooted in the Basque Country but open to the world, combines narrative rigor, formal invention, and a distinctive humanism, with elements of satire. Throughout four feature films and some brief yet solid early work in short films, he has woven a coherent and diverse filmography where the real and the fantastic embrace, and emotion becomes a profound form of knowledge.
Close to the great visual storytellers, sometimes echoing Buñuel or Bergman, Berger sees cinema as an art of resistance and tenderness. The characters in his films face the impossible with irony and compassion, and the everyday becomes extraordinary. His filmography is also a territory where humour and moral lucidity rub shoulders, where each image seems to offer, with respect and wonder, a revelation about the human condition.
He debuted with Mamá (1988), shot in Erandio with Ramón Barea and art direction by Álex de la Iglesia, revealing an early and singular talent. A mix of horror, dark comedy and science fiction, the short already anticipated his inclination for marginal characters and claustrophobic atmospheres. Its screening at ZINEBI, still known at the time as the “Certamen” or Contest, was fresh and profoundly transformative: that memorable session heralded a new and unusual cinema in the Basque Country. The success of Mamá —which subsequently won awards at Alcalá de Henares and Elche, and was selected by the British Film Institute— earned him a scholarship from the Bizkaia Provincial Council to study at New York University. There he shot Truth and Beauty (1994), nominated for the Schools of Cinema and Television’s Emmy Awards. Set in the 1950s, this black-and-white short explored the tension between authenticity and media spectacle, marking the transition from the carefree, radical edge of Mamá to a cosmopolitan refinement. During those years, Berger also taught at the New York Film Academy and collaborated with institutions such as Princeton, Yale, the Sorbonne, and La Fémis, a teaching role he has maintained throughout his career.
The leap to feature films came with Torremolinos 73 (2003), a Spanish-Danish co-production starring Javier Cámara and Candela Peña. Set in late Francoist Spain, the film mixed comedy and nostalgia to tell the story of Alfredo López, a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman who ends up filming domestic erotic movies with his wife, Carmen. From this seemingly trivial material, Berger opened a profound reflection on the desire for freedom, the dignity of the working class, and creativity as a refuge from mediocrity. The work also functions as a metanarrative on the very act of creation: while shooting pornography for Scandinavia on Super 8, Alfredo discovers his artistic vocation and dreams of making his own film. Berger plays with formats —Super 8, 16 mm, and 35 mm— and pays subtle homage to the Bergman universe, without losing sight of the disarming humanity of his protagonists. Alfredo and Carmen are portrayed with tenderness, and their adventure becomes an allegory for the possibility of beauty in times of censorship. Torremolinos 73 won the “Gold Biznaga” award in Málaga, five awards in Toulouse and four Goya nominations, and established Berger as a singular and valuable voice in new Spanish cinema.
With Blancanieves (2012), Berger reached full artistic maturity. Shot in black and white and silent, the film transplanted the Grimm tale to 1920s Andalusia, amid bullfighters, copla crooning, and an almost physical sense of fatality. Carmen, the daughter of a legendary bullfighter, grows up under the domination of her cruel stepmother Encarna (Maribel Verdú) and ultimately becomes “Blancanieves,” a female bullfighter touring Spain with a travelling troupe. Far from any nostalgic exercise, Blancanieves reinvented silence, rescuing the purity of early cinema to give it intense emotional modernity. It combined the imagery of Lorca, the visual stylisation of European silent cinema, and a contemporary perspective on femininity and myth. The absence of dialogue was compensated by expressive acting, editing, and Alfonso de Vilallonga’s enveloping score, guiding each emotion of the story. Blancanieves triumphed: ten Goya Awards —including Best Film and Best Original Screenplay—, the Special Jury Prize in San Sebastián, the Ariel, a César nomination, and multiple international awards confirmed the stature of this radically visual creator. International press hailed Berger as one of the most unique renovators of European cinema, able to blend tradition and avant-garde with popular sensibility.
Five years later, Abracadabra (2017) moved his universe into the realm of surreal comedy and magical realism. In this story of hypnosis and possession, starring Antonio de la Torre and, again, Maribel Verdú, Berger explored the limits of identity and coexistence with the inexplicable. Between the domestic and the fantastic, the film revisited a constant in his cinema: the search for meaning in a transforming world. With eight Goya nominations, Abracadabra reaffirmed his ability to merge the supernatural with the most intimate tensions of everyday existence.
That pursuit found its most universal expression in Robot Dreams (2023), his entry into animation. Adapting Sara Varon’s graphic novel, Berger told, without a single word, the friendship between a dog and a robot in a stylised, emotive New York. The film, an animation with traditional inspiration and artisanal sensibility, combined humour and sadness with disarming naturalness. Clean lines, warm colours, and the expressiveness of the characters facilitate an immediate emotional connection that transcends any linguistic or cultural barrier: animation needs no language, and silence is not a formal gesture, but the manifestation of compassion. Robot Dreams won the European Film Award for Best Animated Feature, two Goya Awards —Best Animated Feature and Best Adapted Screenplay— and an Oscar 2024 nomination, extending the reach and power of Berger’s cinema.
His work is characterised by masterful use of magical realism, where the everyday and the extraordinary coexist fluidly and poetically. Fantasy is a path to the emotional truth of his characters. He restores the importance of gesture, gaze, and visual symbolism to construct a lucid and deeply contemporary social and cultural critique. Simultaneously, he engages with Spanish modernity, not only thematically —exploring desire, identity, and marginality— but also in terms of his capacity to connect cultural heritage and roots to international languages and aesthetics. His melancholic humour adds a complex and deeply human sensitivity: adversity is faced with irony, tenderness, and an inevitable nostalgia that humanises the plots and makes them relatable. This fusion of comedy and tragedy, so rooted in the Hispanic tradition, turns his films into experiences in which the audience finds both entertainment and revelation.
Pablo Berger has received the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (2023) and the Honorary Diboos Federation Award (2024), and was declared Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government (2015). He is a member of the Hollywood Academy, and his cinema has been the subject of international retrospectives. He is a free creator, a storyteller who has made cinema a form of emotion and knowledge, an artist who views the world with the exact —and luminous— mix of innocence and wisdom, capable of opening up, film after film, the doors of wonder.
