José Luis Garci (born as José Luis García Muñoz; 20 January 1944 in Madrid, Spain) is a Spanish director, producer, critic, TV presenter, screenwriter and author. He earned worldwide acclaim and his country's first Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award for Begin the Beguine (1982). Four of his films, including also Asignatura pendiente (1977), Sesión continua (1984) and El abuelo (1998), have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, more than any other Spanish director. His films are characterized for his classical style and the underlying sentimentality of their plots.
Born in 1944 in a humble family from Asturias. After completing a pre-university course, Garci began working as an administrative assistant in a bank. His love for cinema from an early age led him to pursue filmmaking as a career. At age twenty he began writing reviews for a number of film magazines such as: Signos, Cinestudio, Aun and Resena, winning an award in 1968 from the Circulo de Escritores Cinematograficos for his work as film critic.
At the same time, he wrote his first literary works, science fiction stories like : Bibidibabibidibú, Adam Blake, and La Gioconda está triste.
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