Isabel Coixet

Elegy was presented at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival.

That same year she received the gold medal for Fine Arts and was also part of the jury of the 59th edition of the Berlin Film Festival.

Isabel Coixet Castillo (born 9 April 1960) is a Spanish film director.

Isabel Coixet was born in Sant Adrià del Besòs next to Barcelona on 9 April 1960.

She started filming when she was given an 8 mm camera on the occasion of her First Communion.

After obtaining a BA degree in history at Barcelona University, where she majored in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century History, she worked in advertising and spot writing for the cinema magazine Fotogramas.

She continued in the world of advertising, standing out as creative director of the agency JWT.

Her clients included BMW, Renault and Ikea.

She won several accolades for her spots, but the ads did not fulfill her expectations.

Coixet made her first short film in 1984: Mira y verás.

She is one of the most prolific film directors of contemporary Spain, having directed twelve feature-length films since the beginning of her film career in 1988, in addition to documentary films, shorts, and commercials.

Her films depart from the traditional national cinema of Spain, and help to “untangle films from their national context ...

clearing the path for thinking about national film from different perspectives.” The recurring themes of “emotions, feelings, and existential conflict” coupled with her distinct visual style secure the “multifaceted (she directs, writes, produces, shoots, and acts)” filmmaker's status as a “Catalan auteur.”

In 1988, Coixet made her debut as a scriptwriter and director in Demasiado Viejo Para Morir Joven (Too Old to Die Young).

For this movie, she was nominated at the Goya Awards as a Best New Director.

In 1996, she traveled to the United States to shoot her first English-language feature film, entitled Things I Never Told You (Cosas que nunca te dije).

This drama cast American actors led by Lili Taylor and Andrew McCarthy.

Coixet received her second nomination at the Goya Awards for Best Original Screenplay.

Coixet then connected with a French production company, and in 1998 she shot — for the first time in Spain and in Spanish — the historical adventure A los que aman.

Two years later she founded her own production company, with which she produced her most acclaimed film to date, Mi vida sin mí (My Life Without Me).

Since then she has been one of the most acclaimed directors of Spanish cinema.

In 2000, she founded her own production company called Miss Wasabi Films, for which she has produced over 400 commercials.

Her international success came in 2003 thanks to the intimate drama My Life Without Me.

The film was based on a short story by Nancy Kincaid.

Canadian actress Sarah Polley played Ann, a young mother who decides to hide from her family that she has terminal cancer.

This Hispanic-Canadian co-production was highly praised at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Also the documentary Journey to the Heart of Torture, which was filmed in Sarajevo during the Balkan War and won an award at the October 2003 Human Rights Film Festival.

Coixet then continued working with Polley as her lead actress with the film The Secret Life of Words, which was released in 2005 and also starred Tim Robbins and Javier Cámara.

The film was awarded four Goyas: Best Film, Best Director, Best Production and Best Screenplay.

In 2005, Coixet joined eighteen other international filmmakers, among them Gus Van Sant, Walter Salles and Joel and Ethan Cohen, to make the groundbreaking collective project Paris, je t’aime, in which each director explored a different Paris quarter.

In April 2006, she was honored with the Creu de San Jordi De Cine Awards by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

The Barcelona director received not one but two awards.

In addition to the critical award for The Secret Life of Words (La vida secreta de las palabras) as the best Spanish film, she also received the Rosa de Sant Jordi prize, voted by the audience of Radio Nacional de España (RNE), for the best production.

The award ceremony was held at the Palau de la Música.

Coixet has also made prominent documentaries on major themes, such as Invisibles, which was selected for the "Panorama" section of the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, about the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders.

In 2008, Coixet released Elegy, which was filmed in Vancouver and produced by Lakeshore Entertainment.

The film was based on Philip Roth's novel The Dying Animal, was written for the screen by Nicholas Meyer, and starred Penélope Cruz and Ben Kingsley.

In 2009, as an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, she premiered the film Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, shot in both Japan and Barcelona and starring Rinko Kikuchi, Sergi López and Min Tanaka, with a script by Coixet herself.

And at the Centre D'Art Santa Mònica, she inaugurated From I to J, an installation in honor of the work of John Berger.

In April 2009 at the Centre d'Arts Santa Mónica in Barcelona and in April 2010 at La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Coixet presented a monographic exhibition dedicated to the British writer, art critic, poet and artist John Berger entitled From I to J. A tribute by Isabel Coixet to John Berger, with the collaboration of the architect Benedetta Tagliabue and the participation of the actresses Penélope Cruz, Monica Bellucci, Isabelle Huppert, Maria de Medeiros, Sarah Polley, Tilda Swinton and Leonor Watling.