Víctor Erice

Known for DirectingBorn 1940-06-30 (age 85)Carranza, Vizcaya, País Vasco, España

Víctor Erice Aras (Spanish: [ˈbiɣtoɾ eˈɾiθe]; born 30 June 1940; Karrantza) is a Spanish film director. He is best known for his two feature fiction films, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), which many regard as one of the greatest Spanish films ever made, and El Sur (1983). Erice was born in Karrantza, Biscay. He studied law, political science, and economics at the University of Madrid. He also attended the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografia in 1963 to study film direction. He wrote film criticism and reviews for the Spanish film journal Nuestro Cine, and made a series of short films before making his first feature film, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), a critical portrait of 1940s rural Spain. Erice was among other filmmakers, such as Luis Buñuel, who lived in “such restricted societies as Franco’s Spain,” to take aim at the authoritarian rule in power. At the time his first film was released in 1973, Francisco Franco was still in power. One of the things The Spirit of the Beehive is known for is its use of symbolism to portray what life was like in Spain under Franco’s rule. Setting the movie in 1940, at the start of Franco’s rule, was a risk for Erice, given that the film “wasn't a propagandist effort in which stalwart Francoists won victories against evil, priest-massacring Republicans.” Ten years later, Erice wrote and directed El Sur (1983), based on a story from Adelaida García Morales, another highly regarded film, although the producer Elías Querejeta only allowed him to film the first two-thirds of the story. His third movie, The Quince Tree Sun (1992) is a documentary about painter Antonio López García. The film won the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. In July 2022, thirty years after his last full-length film, a project for a new Erice film (Cerrar los ojos) supported by Pecado Films, Tándem Films, Nautilus as well as Canal Sur was revealed to be in development. The film premiered in the following year at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and was met with very positive reviews. He was a member of the jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May. At the 2014 Locarno Film Festival, Erice was awarded with a Golden Leopard award for lifetime achievement.Read more

Movies & web series

Between the Tracks

On the Terrace

El Sur

The Spirit of the Beehive

Close Your Eyes

Dream of Light

Víctor Erice – Abbas Kiarostami: Correspondences

Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet

La Morte Rouge

3.11 A Sense of Home Films

Sodankylä Forever

The Footprints of a Spirit

Historic Centre

Don't Expect Too Much

Ana, Three Minutes

Los días perdidos

Nuevo / Otro Cine Español - Un Lugar En El Cine

Arroyo de la luz

Sea-Mail

Tarde de domingo

The Challenges

Next Fall

Oscuros sueños de agosto

Antoñito vuelve a casa

Piedra y cielo

Wiara

Plegaria

Broken Windows

Víctor Erice: Paris-Madrid allers-retours

Sodankylä Forever

Versión Española: Victor Erice

Sketches (1990-2003)

Lifeline

Victor Erice in Madrid

Celebrate Cinema 101

Preguntas En El Atardecer

Pages From a Lost Diary

Memoria y sueño: Sierra de Teruel

Memoria y sueño: El desprecio