--- name: "Pablo Berger" canonical: "https://film.one/person/pablo-berger" fi1m_id: "pablo-berger" imdb_id: "nm0074311" tmdb_id: 95528 wikidata_id: "Q3325924" roles: ["Director","Writer","Producer"] born: "1 January 1963" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 82 average_as: "director" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-27T08:08:18.377868+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Pablo Berger ## Identity Pablo Berger - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/pablo-berger - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** pablo-berger - **IMDb ID:** nm0074311 - **TMDB ID:** 95528 - **Wikidata ID:** Q3325924 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Berger, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3325924, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0074311/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/95528 Director and writer. Born 1 January 1963 in Bilbao, Vizcaya, País Vasco, España. ## Details - **Work:** Director, Writer, Producer - **Born:** 1 January 1963, Bilbao, Vizcaya, País Vasco, España - **Active:** 2012–present - **Also known as:** Pablo Berger Uranga - **Frequently works with:** [Ibon Cormenzana](https://film.one/person/ibon-cormenzana.md) - **Academy Awards:** 1 Oscar nomination - **Average Fi1m score:** 82, as director, over 2 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2010s 81 (1), 2020s 84 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Berger, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3325924, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0074311/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/95528 ## Streaming the US now - **Disney+:** [*Robot Dreams*](https://film.one/film/robot-dreams.md) (84) - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*Blancanieves*](https://film.one/film/blancanieves.md) (81) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Pablo Berger > Pablo Berger makes films that hardly speak, and every one is a different bet: a silent Snow White in a bullring, a hand-drawn dog in 1980s New York. The bets mostly pay off; his middles are where he loses us. Robot lies on a beach, rusting, and dreams he can walk. He gets up, crosses the sand and goes home; then the sand comes back. Nobody says a word, because nobody in *Robot Dreams* (2023) says a word, and nobody in *Blancanieves* (2012) does either. Two of Pablo Berger's four features have no dialogue at all. He has decided that a film is pictures, cutting, music and noise, and he holds to that more stubbornly than almost any director we know. The career is four films in twenty years, each a different dare. *Torremolinos 73* (2003), his debut, is a period comedy about an encyclopaedia salesman who turns to amateur pornography in the last years of Franco. *Blancanieves* took years to finance and arrived as a silent, black-and-white Snow White set among the matadors of 1920s Andalusia; it is the best version of that story we have seen, and its father-and-daughter scenes moved us. *Abracadabra* (2017) is a black comedy about a housewife and the paranormal, and the one critics found hardest to hold together; we have not reviewed it. Then *Robot Dreams*, a hand-drawn adaptation of Sara Varon's graphic novel, set in a New York Berger lived in for a decade and drawn down to the graffiti on the subway cars. What works is the trust in the frame. In *Blancanieves* Berger uses the close-up, the iris and the sparing intertitle as ways of telling a story, and in *Robot Dreams* he lets flat colours and clean black lines carry a friendship. He keeps the same people around him. Alfonso de Vilallonga's scores have done the talking on three of his films, Kiko de la Rica has shot two, and Fernando Franco has cut two, including *Robot Dreams*, where the seasons pass in small repeated days rather than in montage. The sound is the most exact thing in it: the city has a noise for everything and the robot has one for trying to stand up. What does not work is the middle. *Blancanieves* hurries once Carmen leaves the house, as if Berger could not wait to reach the ring, and Maribel Verdú's stepmother is a run of set pieces rather than a woman. *Robot Dreams* stretches a slim book across 102 minutes, and for twenty of them you can see the stretching. And yet its last ten minutes hurt us more than we expected, because Berger had let each of Robot's dreams run just long enough for us to believe it before the sand came back, and by the end we had stopped bracing. He works slowly and he has never made the same film twice. We would not guess what comes next. Start with *Robot Dreams*, with someone old enough for a sadness that does not get fixed; go on to *Blancanieves*, and do not let the word silent put you off. ## Biography Pablo Berger Uranga is a Spanish film director and screenwriter. Born in 1963 in Bilbao, he directed his first short film, *Mamá*, in 1988. He studied for a master’s in film at New York University and later taught at the New York Film Academy. His feature films are the comedy *Torremolinos 73* (2003), the silent drama *Blancanieves* (2012), the black comedy *Abracadabra* (2017), and the animated film *Robot Dreams* (2023), which he also wrote and produced. *Robot Dreams* was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, cineuropa.org.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *Robot Dreams* (2023), Fi1m 84, Director, Writer, Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/robot-dreams.md) - *Blancanieves* (2012), Fi1m 81, Director, Writer, Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/blancanieves.md) ## Complete filmography (7) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Robot Dreams* (2023), Director, Writer, Producer — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/robot-dreams.md) - *Abracadabra* (2017), Director, Writer, Producer - *Heirs of the Beast* (2016), Actor - *Blancanieves* (2012), Writer, Director, Producer — Fi1m 81, [page](https://film.one/film/blancanieves.md) - *Two Stupid Eggs* (2007), Story - *Torremolinos 73* (2003), Director, Writer, Associate Producer - *Mama* (1988), Director, Writer ## Gallery - ![Pablo Berger en la alfombra roja de los Premios Goya 2024 celebrados en Valladolid](https://film.one/media/person/11910/gallery-24297a3ae15c.jpg) Pablo Berger en la alfombra roja de los Premios Goya 2024 celebrados en Valladolid — Pedro J Pacheco, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Goyas_2024_-_Pablo_Berger.jpg/1280px-Goyas_2024_-_Pablo_Berger.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Pablo Berger](https://film.one/media/person/11910/gallery-4c00180f0d63.jpg) Pablo Berger — Pedro J Pacheco, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Goyas_2024_-_Pablo_Berger_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-Goyas_2024_-_Pablo_Berger_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Pablo Berger en la alfombra roja de los Premios Goya 2024 celebrados en Valladolid](https://film.one/media/person/11910/gallery-50b1e8ddd1c4.jpg) Pablo Berger en la alfombra roja de los Premios Goya 2024 celebrados en Valladolid — Pedro J Pacheco, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Goyas_2024_-_Pablo_Berger_02.jpg/1280px-Goyas_2024_-_Pablo_Berger_02.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Director Pablo Berger and others from the production team participate in a panel in Spain. The conference took place in 2013, shortly after the film's release.T](https://film.one/media/person/11910/gallery-e8db65b0120c.jpg) Director Pablo Berger and others from the production team participate in a panel in Spain. The conference took place in 2013, shortly after the film's release.T — Arcadia Motion Pictures, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/Pablo_Berger_Press_Panel.jpg/1280px-Pablo_Berger_Press_Panel.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Pablo Berger](https://film.one/media/person/11910/gallery-dea9ec3e7931.jpg) Pablo Berger — Image via TMDB - ![El director de cine español Pablo Berger en la 73 edición de las Medallas del Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos. (2018)](https://film.one/media/person/11910/gallery-748a67a8ae79.jpg) El director de cine español Pablo Berger en la 73 edición de las Medallas del Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos. (2018) — Chamarasca, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Pablo_Berguer_2018.jpg/1280px-Pablo_Berguer_2018.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) ## Awards ### Academy Awards — 0 won, 1 nominated - 2024: Best Animated Feature (nominated), for *Robot Dreams* ### Other awards — 3 won, 2 nominated - Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts 2024: Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts (won) - Goya Award for Best Adapted Screenplay 2024: Goya Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (won), for *Robot Dreams* - European Film Award for Best Director 2013: European Film Award for Best Director (nominated), for *Blancanieves* - European Film Award for Best Film 2013: European Film Award for Best Film (nominated), for *Blancanieves* - Goya Award for Best Original Screenplay 2012: Goya Award for Best Original Screenplay (won) *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/pablo-berger