Yet Leonardo Favio, who would turn 85 today and was the most popular director in Argentine history —and also happened to be one of the most successful romantic singer-songwriters in Latin America— remains unknown to foreign audiences. An essential figure in Argentine popular culture, Leonardo Favio was born Fuad Jorge Jury in 1938 in Luján de Cuyo, in southern Mendoza. Favio’s filmmaking career began with a trio of art-house films based on short stories and/or written by one of his two brothers, Zuhair. Favio paused his huge musical success after his second LP to focus on directing what would become landmark box-office hits. Favio has proven cinema lives inside these things, it doesn’t narrate them using external resources,” Argentine scholar Horacio González once said to describe him.

Source: Bueno Aires Herald May 28, 2023 14:17 UTC