I’m a writer who shoots stories with a director’s soul.

It started with my grandfather’s endless panoramic shots from his travels.

He was a self-taught inventor who patented a thresher in the 1950s in a small Spanish town (Aranda de Duero). He sold it across Europe and documented everything on Super 8. On hot summer afternoons in the late 1980s, he would “force” my cousins, my brother, and me to sit in front of the television to watch his adventures.

He was a better inventor than a filmmaker, but those tapes lit the fuse.

In one of them, he films the 1991 Soviet coup attempt from a tourist bus in Moscow’s Red Square, while my grandmother warns him he’ll end up in a gulag.

He didn’t.

I started writing. Then I saw The Third Man, and discovered Bergman, Kubrick, and Wilder,

thanks to an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who used to visit my mother’s stationery shop in Madrid.

By 15, I was studying scriptwriting with Horacio Valcárcel. Then came university, Maza Photography Studio (where I learned lighting), and later Aranda’s local TV station.

In 2008, Dubai happened.

What was meant to be a one-year contract covering Emirati football became a decade of experiences. I filmed every kind of sport imaginable: from camel racing and diving to rallies and tennis.

But the writer in me grew restless.

I started writing audiovisual treatments and collaborating with directors around the world — from France to Japan, the United States, China, Mexico, Argentina, and the UAE. I’ve written campaigns for cars, tech, sportswear, food, beauty and luxury. Some treatments won. Others left a bittersweet taste, proof that the best idea doesn’t always win, and a reminder that money matters.

Still, every challenge sharpened the craft.

After five years, the filmmaker in me could no longer stay quiet. I bought a camera and returned to shooting, directing, and editing documentaries, commercials, corporate films, social content, and interviews.

Some pieces reached millions online; others played in cinemas, like Swim 62 and Abu Dhabi Success Story, earning international recognition.

I’ve always loved seeing my work on a screen. Seeing it on the big screen is something else.

Today, I’m an end-to-end filmmaker.

Sometimes I write. Sometimes I shoot. Sometimes I direct. Sometimes I do it all.

But as long as there’s a story to tell, you can count on me.

Álvaro