Borau was born in
Zaragoza. During the
Spanish Civil War he was kept from school by his overprotecting parents. From an early age, Borau had great love for literature and films. Following family pressure, he studied law in his native Zaragoza and worked at Madrid's Ministry of Housing in 1957. He began his career working for the regional newspaper
Heraldo de Aragón as film critic. He pursued his interest in filmmaking by moving to Madrid enrolling in the national film school IIEC (Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias de Cinematografia) where he specialized in film direction. He graduated with the short film
En el Río (1960). Borau followed this with a series of shorts and commercials for Spanish television. His first feature film was a genre film:
Brandy (1963), a low-budget Western starring
Alex Nicol and
Robert Hundar.
Brandy was followed the next year by
Crimen de doble filo Double edged crime (1964), a brooding psychological thriller. These two films were received as just two commercial projects. In 1966, Borau launched his television career for the Spanish network
TVE working on episodes of
Dichoso Mundo (What a World), which starred stage actress
Conchita Montes. From 1962 until 1970, Borau taught screenwriting at the national film school EOC. Some of his students became the next generation of notable Spanish filmmakers including
Antonio Drove,
Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón,
Pilar Miró and
Ivan Zulueta. Set in a fictitious
Latin American country,
Hay q matar a B was a political thriller clearly inspired by Francoist Spain. In 1975 Borau made the film for which he is best remembered
Furtivos (Poachers) (1975). The plot, set in the woodlands of Segovia, is a stark story of violence incest and matricide. Co-scripted with Gutierrez Aragon, Borau took the role of the regional governor in the film. He fought the Francoist censorship to have his film released the way he intended.
Furtivos was a great commercial and critical success, it won best film, Golden Shell, at the
San Sebastián International Film Festival becoming one of the key film of the political transition in Spain. His next project, was to produce and co script
Camada Negra (Black litter) (1976) a film directed by Gutiérrez Aragón his writing partner in
Furtivos.
Camada Negra, a study of fascism's defining elements, like
Furtivos became emblematic of Spanish films of that period. In 1979 Borau undertook another international coproduction,
La Sabina, a story of passion and superstition set in
Andalusia with a cast of Spanish British and American actors including
Jon Finch,
Simon Ward,
Ángela Molina and
Carol Kane. That same year, Borau moved to
Los Angeles in order to fulfill his longtime dream of making a film in
Hollywood. Plagued by financial difficulties, he managed to complete
Rio Abajo (On the line) (1983). The film, a drama centered on the Mexico US border that starred
Victoria Abril and
David Carradine, was blocked from competing in the
Berlin film festival, where it had been presented as the Spanish entry, due to his unspanish look.
On the line was generally well received in
Spain, but failed to interest American distributors till 1988 and even then made a poor showing in the American market. Borau's seventh film,
Tata mía (1986), made in the style of Madrid comedies, centers on Elvira, a former nun unprepared to face a world so different from her religious or familiar past, her aging nanny is brought back to Madrid to help Elvira face the future. The film, an allegory of Spanish transition to democracy, had a stellar cast headed by
Carmen Maura,
Alfredo Landa and
Imperio Argentina. ==Filmography==