Luis Buñuel, (born February 22, 1900, Calanda, Spain—died July 29, 1983, Mexico City, Mexico) Spanish filmmaker who was a leading figure in Surrealism, the tenets of which suffused both his life and his work. An unregenerate atheist and communist sympathizer who was preoccupied with themes of gratuitous cruelty, eroticism, and religious mania, he won early fame with avant-garde experiments in France and then pursued an obscure career in Mexican commercial cinema before earning international acclaim with his late films made in Spain and France.