Julio Medem is a well-known film director and screenwriter of Spanish origin, known for working complex and highly controversial themes.
Julio Medem was born on October 21, 1958 on Saint Sebastian, a coastal city north of Spain located in the Basque Autonomous Country.
He spent a good part of his childhood in Saint Sebastian, but when his brother arrived Alberto the world, her parents decided it was best to move to Madrid, where they would have more possibilities.
Within the big city he was educated in the Pilar College, receiving an elite education, in what could be called an environment of comforts and facilities typical of a bourgeois society of good time.
From a young age he was emerging as a fanatic of the arts, especially the kinetic ones. His father owned a small super-wide-format camera with which he used to take fragments of his family’s life.
At night, he and his sister Ana used to film small fantasy scenes that arose at the time. This led Julio to think about the infinite possibilities of time and space management.
Already entered adolescence, in the middle of the ’70, a terrible love event marked him very deeply, even making a small novel entitled “My first day”.
Julio was deeply in love with a neighbor in his house, but suffered terribly from being unrequited. Day after night he dreamed of this little woman, who eventually ended up being the girlfriend of one of his brothers.
Trying to clear his mind of this love affair, he focused on sports such as athletics. To his surprise and that of his family he almost got a scholarship to attend the Olympics, but opted for something more conventional.
He had always been obsessed with the dark recesses of the human mind, which is why he set out to become a psychiatrist after medical school.
Despite having received both medicine and surgery in the University of the Basque Country, He did not abandon the hopes of being able to convert the scripts he wrote into future feature films.
Around this time he began working as a film critic in a column in the newspaper “The Voice of Euskadi”. That is how he began to get to know the companies in the industry and decided to try his luck with his own work.
As much as he tried for a while, like his script “Cows”Was not accepted by any production company. Totally demoralized, Medem began working on something simpler, more salable, when Sogetel called him in to film Vacas.
After its premiere in 1992 received such praise and critical acclaim that it was not long until he released his second work “The red squirrel”.
This film came into the hands of Stanley kubrick, one of the most acclaimed directors of all time, who sincerely recommended Medem as one of the most promising filmmakers of recent times.
Until Steven Spieberg asked him to join his working group, Dreamworks, for the realization of “The mask of Zorro“Who would star Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zetha Jones Y Anthony Hopkins.
Incredibly, the Spaniard chose to put this mega proposal aside, preferring to be honest with his thoughts and ideology, which in no way included selling out to Hollywood.
Then came “Land” on nineteen ninety six, and without spending much more decided to create his own production company the following year. It is called “Alicia Produce”And has done some of his work.
During 1998 He launched “Lovers of the Arctic Circle”With which the critics valued him as one of the best Spanish filmmakers.
To continue with his theme, he decided to give a new life to Ana, the tragic protagonist of her fifth feature film, in Lucy (Penelope Cruz) on “Lucia and Sex”, Over there 2001.
The September 21, 2003 his documentary “The Basque Ball”Caused a lot of commotion and agitation due to the way he presented the political problems facing the region.
The director decided to leave “Skin Against Stone”To be released at another time, as he believed it was appropriate that it was not the time to continue stirring up the public.
His most recent work was “Chaotic Ana”Which premiered at the beginning of 2007.