Luis Alcoriza was a Mexican and of Spanish origin film director, scriptwriter and actor.

He came from an actors family. He exiled in 1940 to the north of Africa and Mexico, in South America, due to Spanish Civil War. At the same year, he made his debut in Mexican cinema and theatre by participating in movies like "La torre de los suplicios" (1941), "Naná" (1944), "Reina de reinas: La Virgen María" (1948) o "La liga de las muchachas" (1950). However, his marriage in 1946 with the scriptwriter and actress Janet Riesenfeld (best known as Janet Alcoriza), made him to become a scrpitwriter and film director. At the same year, Norman Foster, a North American film director, directed "The Godson of death", based on a Luis and Janet Alcoriza's script. Alcoriza learnt from Foster to create a good plot. He made his first collaboration with Luis Buñuel adapting, along with his wife, "The great Madcap" (1949), where he also had a playing role.

Thanks to his double job as scriptwriter and film director, he created a large and of high quality filmography, achieving great success on the black comedy genre. Besides, he also participated on television. In the fifties, Alcoriza worked in movies like "Los olvidados" (1950), "The brute" (1953), "Death in the garden" (1956) or "The exterminating angel" (1962), period in which he also wrote some scripts for Antonio Matouk's production company. In 1960, he made his debut as film director and, based on his own scripts, made "Los jóvenes" (1961), "Amor y sexo" (1963), "El gángster" (1965), "El oficio más antiguo del mundo" (1970), "Presagio" (1974), "A paso de cojo" (1980), "El amor es un juego extraño" (1983) or "Día de muertos" (1988), among others.

He was nominated to the Oscars with "Tlayucan" (1962), which won the Diosa de Plata award, as well as "Tiburoneros" (1963), "Paraíso" (1970) and others. He won two Arieles for the co-authory and adaptation of "Los olvidados" (1951) and for the original story and direction of "National mechanics" (1973). In 1974, he won two more Arieles to the best storyline and best adaptation for "Presagio". He also won the prize of the the Venice Film Festival for "Tarahumara" (1965), the Goya in Spain for "Life is most important" (1988) and the Salvador Toscano Medal for his cinematographic merits at RTC (1992).