Isabel Coixet

Isabel Coixet Castillo (Catalan: [izəˈβɛl kuˈʃɛt]; born 9 April 1960; Sant Adrià del Besòs) is a Spanish filmmaker. 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.”

Works

Un amor

Upon settling in the countryside village of La Escapa, Nat accepts a disturbing sexual proposal by neighbour Andreas, paving the way for a self-consuming passion.

Release Date:2023-11-10

Department:Camera

Job:Camera Operator

Vote Count:32

The Movie Teller

María Margarita is the youngest of four siblings in a family living in a mining town in the Atacama Desert (Chile). The most special time of the week for this family is Sunday, when they all go to the movies to enjoy stories that let them escape their everyday lives by transporting them to other worlds. The girl’s parents soon realise that the little girl has a very special gift: an almost uncanny ability to recount movies. The girl’s extraordinary talent will spread throughout the village, changing the fortunes of her family as the country is transformed forever.

Release Date:2023-10-27

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Vote Count:23

The Yellow Ceiling

In 2018, a group of nine women filed a complaint against two of their teachers at Lleida’s Theatre School for sexual abuse carried out between 2001 and 2008, when they were teenagers. It was too late. Due to fear, embarrassment, because they took so long to understand and digest what had happened, the complaint arrived when the statute of limitations had expired and the case had been closed. What they didn’t know is that, despite the statute of limitations having expired, their statements were opening a new door where, perhaps, all was not lost.

Release Date:2022-12-16

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:3

It Snows in Benidorm

Peter has worked all his life at a Manchester bank. When he is awarded an early retirement, he decides to visit his brother in Benidorm, only to discover that he's disappeared.

Release Date:2020-12-11

Department:Camera

Job:Camera Operator

Vote Count:29

Drowning Letters

Thousands of people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea these years trying to reach Europe. Through a mysterious voice from the bottom of the sea, Drowning Letters tells the most tragic years of the European contemporary history.

Release Date:2020-10-09

Department:Production

Job:Associate Producer

Vote Count:2

Elisa & Marcela

The film tells the true story of Elisa Sánchez Loriga and Marcela Gracia Ibeas, two women in 1901 Spain who fell deeply in love. To overcome societal and legal barriers to their relationship, Elisa assumes a male identity, enabling the pair to marry in secret. Their daring act makes them the first recorded same-sex couple to marry in Spain, but their love is tested as they face relentless persecution and sacrifice.

Release Date:2019-05-24

Department:Camera

Job:Camera Operator

Vote Count:383

Hotel Explotación: Las Kellys

More than two hundred thousand women work as maids in Spain, and perform a task as fundamental as invisible in the hospitality sector. Our documentary covers the life, problems and struggle of the Kellys (the ones that clean the hotels). While the government proclaims the strength of the tourism industry in our country, as a flagship of GDP, its working conditions have progressively worsened, reaching a charge of one and a half euros per room. 'Hotel Explotación: Las Kellys' is the story of a fight to empower, organize and restore dignity.

Release Date:2018-11-30

Department:Production

Job:Associate Producer

The Distances

Olivia, Eloy, Guille and Anna travel to Berlin to pay a surprise visit to their friend Comas. His welcome is not as they expected and during the weekend their friendship is put to the test. Together they discover that time and distance can change everything.

Release Date:2018-09-07

Department:Production

Job:Associate Producer

Vote Count:37

The Bookshop

Set in a small English town in 1959, a woman decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield.

Release Date:2017-11-10

Department:Camera

Job:Camera Operator

Vote Count:433

The Spirit of the Painting

Documentary made for the exhibition that the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Quiang made in the Prado Museum. The film reveals all the secrets of the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, one of the great international contemporary artists, famous for his original explosion technique in his drawings thanks to the properties of gunpowder.

Release Date:2017-10-02

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:2

Nobody's Watching

Nico is a famous actor in Argentina, but in New York, nobody takes notice. He needs to juggle bartending, babysitting and odd jobs to keep himself afloat. But when old friends from Buenos Aires come to visit, he needs to juggle the image of his old life with the reality of the struggling actor in New York City.

Release Date:2017-05-18

Department:Production

Job:Co-Producer

Vote Count:26

Spain in a Day

The film is based on Ridley Scott’s Life in a Day — which already has English and Italian versions — and will be a collective project using social media that sees everyday Spaniards contribute one-to15-minute clips from their lives all shot on the same day, Oct. 24.

Release Date:2016-09-30

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Vote Count:5

'Normal'

Release Date:2016-07-06

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Endless Night

Ellesmere Island, northern Canada, 1908. Josephine, a brave but naive woman, embarks on a dangerous journey through inhospitable regions in search of her husband, the explorer Robert Peary, who tries to find a route to the North Pole.

Release Date:2015-11-27

Department:Camera

Job:Camera Operator

Vote Count:49

Teeth

Daisy Brown is a thirteen year old girl with an unusual condition: her teeth won't stop growing. But that's the least of her problems.

Release Date:2015-09-26

Department:Production

Job:Associate Producer

Vote Count:2

Sara's Runaway

Sara lives in a foster-care facility. Her youth days seem to slip through her fingers while she awaits for her father to come back.

Release Date:2015-04-17

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Vote Count:1

Talking about Rose. Prisoner of Hissène Habré

"Parler de Rose" (Talking about Rose), narrated by Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche and directed by Isabel Coixet examines the life and death of Rose Lokissim a prisoner of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad. Survivors of Habré's jails remember Rose as a brave inmate who took care of the sick and kept up the prisoners' morale. She also delivered clandestine messages to the outside world to inform relatives of their loved ones inside. Ultimately, Habré's political police, the DDS, learned of the messages and murdered her. Among the DDS files uncovered in 2001 by Human Rights Watch was the police report of Rose's last interrogation. Rose's questioners wrote that Rose said that even if they killed her, "Chad will thank her and history will talk about her." Now, 29 years later, Rose's courage is finally being remembered as Hissène Habré stands trial beginning 20 July 2015 before a special court in Senegal, where he has lived since he was overthrown in 1990.

Release Date:2015-03-05

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Learning to Drive

As her marriage dissolves, a Manhattan writer takes driving lessons from a Sikh instructor with marriage troubles of his own. In each other's company they find the courage to get back on the road and the strength to take the wheel.

Release Date:2014-08-21

Department:Camera

Job:Camera Operator

Vote Count:195

Yesterday Never Ends

A couple meets at their son’s grave ten years after his death; his plot is to make way for a casino city. Anger, hatred and bitterness erupt. A nightmarish drama that goes far beyond this couple’s private grief and points towards the end of society.

Release Date:2013-04-26

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:18

White Tide

MAREA BLANCA is a Corona Save The Beach documentary directed by Isabel Coixet. It is a tribute to the thousands of anonymous heroes who left everything to save the Galician coast. An example for all of us who fight for the recovery and conservation of our beaches.

Release Date:2012-05-16

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Vote Count:2

Listening to Judge Garzón

This documentary summarizes an extensive interview made by the writer Manuel Rivas to the former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón.

Release Date:2011-04-20

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:6

Aral, the Lost Sea

Documentary produced for the We Are Water Foundation, on the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Aral was just 50 years ago, the fourth largest lake in the world, with 66,000 square kilometers. Today is a vast desert with skeletons of boats stranded on the sand.

Release Date:2010-09-20

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:3

Dear John

"This short film is a letter to a person whom I haven't seen for a long time. Since I couldn't find the words to explain to him what had happened in my life that time, I thought I'd show him in pictures what my days had been like without him."

Release Date:2010-06-18

Department:Camera

Job:Camera Operator

Vote Count:1

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo

A Japanese assassin falls in love with the Spanish wine seller she was hired to kill.

Release Date:2009-12-02

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:59

Elegy

Cultural critic David Kepesh finds his life -- which he indicates is a state of "emancipated manhood" -- thrown into tragic disarray by Consuela Castillo, a well-mannered student who awakens a sense of sexual possessiveness in her teacher.

Release Date:2008-08-08

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:284

Invisibles

A series of short films examining the world's overlooked problems and the people who suffer from them.

Release Date:2007-02-15

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:14

Paris Je T'aime

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

Release Date:2006-06-21

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:760

Glue

A teenage summer in a small town in the desert, a dysfunctional family, a rock band, a can full of glue, two boys, one girl, loads of tongue kisses, dry heat, wind in Patagonia, existential angst... A teenage story in the middle of nowhere.

Release Date:2006-02-02

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:30

The Secret Life of Words

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.

Release Date:2005-12-15

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:206

Journey to the Heart of Torture

Using testimonies of experts that help torture victims to recover and even some victims that talk about their experiences, Coixet travels across different places (Denmark, Sarajevo, Bosnia) trying to approach an incredibly close reality that many people think it´s past.

Release Date:2003-09-24

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Character:

My Life Without Me

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

Release Date:2003-03-07

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:469

Jealousy

Release Date:2002-08-01

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Those Who Love

A secret and deep passion marks the life of a young doctor, and threatens the existence of those around him.

Release Date:1998-10-24

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:11

Meteoritos

Release Date:1997-08-01

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Things I Never Told You

Don is a real estate salesman who volunteers at a "hotline for hope". Ann, who works in a photo store, has been told by her boyfriend that he doesn't love her anymore and wants to break up. To try to win him back, she records a videotape where she tells him things she never told him. When Don and Ann cross paths, their lives change fundamentally.

Release Date:1996-04-24

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:33

Mira y verás

Release Date:1984-01-01

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Light on Broken Glass

Preparing for the revival of a hit Broadway show towards the end of a celebrated career, actress Melody Harper is, for the first time in her life, uncertain and afraid. Struggling with the crushing possibility that her best years may be behind her, she quickly starts losing her grasp on reality as she experiences vivid memories of her younger self.

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Release Date:2013-08-28

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Voice

Vote Count:15

The Days of Abandonment

It follows Olga, a writer forced to give up her artistic ambitions when her husband suddenly leaves her and their two young daughters.

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Omnivore

From Peruvian salt flats to Rwandan coffee forests, explore and celebrate the ingredients that built societies, shaped beliefs, and forever altered the tapestry of humanity.

Release Date:2024-07-18

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:6

Late Xou con Marc Giró

Marc Giró presents a very entertaining late night show with interviews with prominent personalities from the world of cinema, theatre, music, television, literature and social activism in our national scene.

Release Date:2023-10-09

Character:Invitada

Episode Count:1

Cuidarnos entre nosotros nos hace humanos

In this miniseries based on many true stories, we experience firsthand that instinct that makes us care for others.

Release Date:2022-12-15

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:4

Vote Count:2

¿Qué (diablos) es España?

Release Date:2022-11-02

Vote Count:1

Luis García Berlanga: pasado, presente y futuro del cine español

A conversation about the work of Spanish filmmaker Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010) and his perdurance in contemporary Spanish cinema.

Release Date:2021-07-23

Character:Self - Filmmaker

Vote Count:1

Foodie Love

A pair of thirty-somethings meet through a food lover app and embark on a relationship despite past scars. Over the course of several dates, they discover where their tastes overlap and whether their passion for food, and shared distaste for foodie pretension, is enough to spark true love.

Release Date:2019-12-04

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:8

Vote Count:29

El cerro de los dioses

A reimagining of the myth of Faust, in which a documentary director and her producer investigate a number of celebrities.

Release Date:2019-11-08

Character:Isabel Coixet

Vote Count:2

Querido Fotogramas

The 70th anniversary of the “Fotogramas” magazine comes in the shape of a sentimental voyage through the history of Spanish cinema thanks to a mosaic of voices represented by people who make films, those who write them and those who consume them. The documentary pays tribute to the readers of “Fotogramas” helped by the leading figures of Spanish cinema, who will read to the camera the most representative letters received at its offices in the history of the magazine.

Release Date:2018-10-05

Character:Self

Vote Count:2

It's Not That Cold Siberia

Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet travels to Siberia to attend a film festival where an unknown man —with whom she cannot communicate and who reminds her of her father— hands her a box containing the photographs of a lifetime. In Barcelona, she tries to put the images in order and unravel their mystery.

Release Date:2016-11-06

Department:Camera

Job:Director of Photography

Character:Self - Filmmaker

Sex, Maracas & Chihuahuas

A joyful tale filled with music. The rise of radio. The jazz big bands. The legendary clubs and ballrooms. The soundtracks of the great musical films and TV shows. Sex and romance, gangsters, luxury cars and palm trees. From Barcelona to New York, with a stop in Cuba. The birth of Las Vegas. The sound of the maracas. Chihuahuas everywhere. The incredible life story of Xavier Cugat (1900-90).

Release Date:2016-05-02

Character:Self - Filmmaker

Vote Count:2

Broken Heart is not Like a Broken Vase or a Vase

How will a top cardiologist mend her broken heart in the wake of a failed relationship? She is clear about her symptoms: first, pain in the sternum and then an obsession that hijacks her brain as she goes over and over her most recent dates. Once she has made the diagnosis, will she believe in her speedy recovery? Perhaps the energy efficiency manager who works in her hospital will be able to revive her broken heart.

Release Date:2016-04-22

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:5

Another Me

A teenager finds her perfect life upended when she's stalked by a mysterious doppelganger who has her eyes set on assuming her identity.

Release Date:2013-11-15

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:242

This Man, This Woman

An estranged man, Matt Heller, and a woman, Martha Parks, encounter each other by chance on a plane, and relive memories of their turbulent romantic relationship. Kirsty Sachs, a talk show host who has an affair with Heller and changes the course of his whirlwind relationship with Parks.

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Nobody’s Heart

A beautiful, poetic story of love and loss, set against the backdrop of Lisbon in the thirties. As Lily is forced to confront the sudden and devastating death of her husband, she inherits his cork factory and begins to form an unexpected, highly charged relationship with his enigmatic co-worker, igniting repressed imagination and passion, and discovering unknown truths about both herself and her late husband.

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Maruja

Maruja lives with her husband in San Ildefonso, a working-class neighborhood of Cornellà, on the outskirts of Barcelona. She is 87 years old, she gets bored at home and often goes out in search of fresh air that makes her smile, always with her shopping cart.

Release Date:2022-08-03

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Peace Peace Now Now

Stories of women who challenged armed conflicts around the world. Brave and extraordinary women that made history. Most of them have remained in the dark and now their stories will be told.

Release Date:2021-06-01

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:1

Estirando el Chicle

Release Date:2020-05-03

Character:Herself

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:2

La resistencia

Release Date:2018-02-01

Character:Invitada

Episode Count:2

Vote Count:20

Project Time

In the future, humanity has the necessary keys to use energy responsibly, but is faced with new moral dilemmas.

Release Date:2017-09-17

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:6

Dennis Hopper: Uneasy Rider

The life & times of Dennis Hopper, showbiz maestro and Hollywood eccentric.

Release Date:2016-06-29

Character:Self

Vote Count:4

Toni Segarra: The Ads Writer

Advertising surrounds us. It is part of our lives, our memory and our culture: it is a pure reflection of our society. However, those who think and create ads are unknown people. Playing with the mechanisms of publicity as a narrative resource, we enter this medium through Spain's best creative director: Toni Segarra.

Release Date:2016-06-09

Character:Herself

Vote Count:1

Words, Maps, Secrets and Other Things

A portrait of the internationally acclaimed Spanish film director Isabel Coixet and an analysis of her particular world and her sensibility as a creator: her fictional universe, her career and her life through the words of actors, technicians, family, friends, journalists, specialized critics and those filmmakers who have been inspired by her work.

Release Date:2015-04-24

Character:Self - Filmmaker

Vote Count:7

El culo del mundo

El culo del mundo' is a documentary directed by and starring comedian Andreu Buenafuente, the idea for which came about three months after the cancellation of one of his last television programmes, when he received an email from a viewer. This email makes him ask himself why he dedicates himself to comedy and why he has never thought of leaving the profession after three decades. All this will be the starting point of a journey that will take this comedian and presenter deep into the heart of comedy.

Release Date:2014-04-11

Vote Count:8

Women, a Thing for Men

Chapter directed by Isabel Coixet about the traditional role of women in Spanish society and the impact of gender-based violence crimes on the media.

Release Date:2009-11-26

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:1

Unmade Beds

Axl wants to find his long-lost father and rediscover his past. Vera just wants to forget hers as she tries to move on from heartbreak. Their stories come together in the melting-pot of 21st century London.

Release Date:2009-09-02

Department:Crew

Job:Thanks

Vote Count:43

Letters to Nora

Nora's sister Rosa sends her letters explaining how she's living in Bolivia to keep Nora updated about her family and the famous illness among poor latinoamerican families.

Release Date:2007-08-04

Department:Directing

Job:Director

With Good Reason

A multi-part feature on the governing body of Spain, the Popular Party under Jose María Aznar. Themes include the bombing of Iraq, immigration, U.S. fire in Baghdad, and the manipulation of the media.

Release Date:2004-11-12

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:12

Lo + plus

Release Date:1995-04-04

Character:Self - Guest

Episode Count:1

Morbus

A scientist has discovered a formula that brings the dead back to life. Meanwhile, a prostitute, who dreams of writing a book in a brothel, meets a true writer with whom she falls in love. A satanic sect will cross into their lives.

Release Date:1983-05-02

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:1

Bike Me Up

Six filmmakers take part in this anthology film which cross six European cities, celebrating the locations’ relationships with cycling.

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Too Old to Die Young

Two friends just find any temporary jobs to get by. One of them quits his job as a waiter to move to work as a messenger; the other is working as a taxi driver. The messenger, in his comings and goings at night, go through many offices, private homes and bars and will be in the most varied situations: some of them dark, sometimes sinister and pathetic and some even pleasant.

Release Date:1989-01-17

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:4

Tre Ciotole

Follows a couple, Marta and Antonio, who split up after what seems like an trivial argument.

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Kill Me Tender

Do all men want the same thing? Nestor, recently widowed, runs a bakery near Barcelona, has a bank account and a bad heart, and swims in the sea every day. He also has a daughter and a two-timing son-in-law. Nestor's maid asks him to hire her 20-something daughter, Maribel, as a shop assistant.

Release Date:2004-02-13

Character:Forense

Vote Count:12

Quelqu’un devrait interdire les dimanches après-midi

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Episode Count:8