Born in 1968 in Palma de Mallorca, Daniel Monzón began his approach to the seventh art as a film critic. He has worked as a film critic for the Spanish reference magazine Fotogramas, for the specialized program of Radio Televisión Española, Días de cine, where he made attractive verbal reviews in front of the camera and where he already showed generous doses of creativity. He also worked as a film divulger in the programs Dos horas de nada hosted by Andrés Aberasturi and La radio de Julia, directed by Julia Otero.
The leap to celluloid came with the script written jointly with Santiago Tabernero from Logroño (also a renowned screenwriter and director linked to certain film programs and presentation of feature films for RTVE), which crystallized in the successful feature film Desvío al Paraíso (Shortcut to ParadiseSpain, 1994), directed by producer and director Gerardo Herrero, starring the excellent British actor Charles Dance.
Five years had to pass before Monzón was able to direct his debut film, The Warrior's Heart (Spain, 1999), written by himself. A murky news of a game-related murder that shook the world of role-playing games (where players play other characters, with their dialogues and actions) is the starting point of this film. The film won two awards at the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, the award for best international film at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal, Canada and the award for best fantasy film at Fantasporto, in Oporto, Portugal.
The next link in his film career marks the beginning of a stable collaboration with Basque screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría. El robo más grande jamás contado (Spain, 2002), is a comedy with some nods to the classic American television series Mission Impossible (Mission: ImpossibleUSA, CBS, 1966-1973), or to the classic film Rififí (Du rififi chez les hommesFrance, 1955), by Jules Dassin. Its plot revolves around the theft of the painting Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, from the Reina Sofia Art Center in Madrid, by a rather bizarre gallery of characters.
For The Kovak Box (Spain-GB, 2006), Monzón starred American actor Timothy Hutton, accompanied by Lucía Jiménez. It was an exercise in suspense. In Monzón's words "...it is clearly a science fiction film, it has to do with Hitchcock, with Lang, with The Twilight Zone". The film won the Audience Award at the Lund Fantastic Film Festival in Sweden.
Daniel Monzón's leap to the international scene came with his extraordinary film Cell 211 (Spain-France, 2009), a penitentiary thriller, served up by some truly top-notch actors, including Luis Tosar and a debutant Alberto Amán, supported by a formidable supporting cast, headed by Antonio Resines, Marta Etura and Carlos Bardem. It won 8 Goya awards, including best director for Monzón.
It took Daniel Monzón five years to release his next film, El Niño (Spain-France, 2014). Its preparation took a long documentation process. The filmmaker and his scriptwriter spent practically a whole year in the area of the strait, which includes the Rock of Gibraltar and the municipalities of Algeciras or La Línea de la Concepción, both in the province of Cádiz. All this for the purpose of talking to National Police, Customs Surveillance agents, and the Civil Guard. Also with criminals who operated speedboats in the area. To this must be added a complex financing process. In the cast, Luis Tosar, Bárbara Lennie, Eduard Fernández, and Ian McShane support the protagonist Jesús Castro.
Yucatan (Spain, 2018), is a sophisticated and elegant comedy, complexly shot on location in Mexico, Brazil, Casablanca, Morocco and in Tenerife, specifically in the Teide National Park itself. The cast was once again led by Luis Tosar, accompanied by Rodrigo de la Serna, Joan Pera and Stephanie Cayo, among others.
Las leyes de la frontera(The laws of the frontier), is a tribute to the "quinqui" cinema, which was all the rage in the early 80's in Spain. Monzón read the book on which it is based while he was preparing El Niño. The film was released on October 8, 2021, in the last throes of the pandemic, it went a little unnoticed in commercial theaters, but its release on the Netflix platform was accompanied by success, remaining number one in Spain for weeks. It was number two internationally for several weeks in a row. The film had six nominations for the Goya Awards and closed the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Daniel Monzón is aware of the changing model of film conception and the changing tastes of the public. However, he wishes to continue making films to be shown in theaters. The filmmaker is managing some projects for the big screen.
