There are directors who build a film and others who build a universe. Pedro Temboury It belongs, fortunately, to the seconds. In his cabins castrator mats, resurrected karatekas, Catholic surfers, crazy scientists, sea monsters and even Adolf Hitler's incorruted penis. All this with Málaga, Torremolinos and the Costa del Sol as unlikely scenarios of a fantastic cinema proudly gamberro.

Born in Malaga in 1971, Pedro Temboury is a director, writer and producer, and one of the most unique figures of Andalusian underground cinema. Nieto of the historian and defender of the Malagasy heritage Juan Temboury, developed from a very young age a passion for fantastic cinema, terror, series B and all those genres that usually enter the back door of the official history of cinema.

His meeting with Jesus Franco, of whom he was a disciple, a collaborator and a management assistant, was decisive in his formation. From Jess he surely inherited something more important than any cinematographic technique: the conviction that making films does not always require permission. Instead of concealing their influences, Temboury decided to celebrate them and add something unambiguously his own: Malagasy humor, friends, few media, beer and an imagination that never seemed to be too concerned about the word «excess».

Before addressing the feature film he began to manufacture his particular universe in short films such as Life and Death of a record collector (1992), Psycho-lettes (1996) or Adolescent Generator (1998). And precisely 2026 offers a magnificent excuse to return to that first stage.
Thirty years ago, Psycho-lettes appeared, a short film of just ten minutes starring a band of mothers that runs the Andalusian roads, sowing male terror and genital mutilation. Much of the DNA of the future Temboury cinema was already there: gore, provocation, humor, dangerous women and a contagious enthusiasm for the exploitation cinema.

Five years later came the film that would end up becoming its most emblematic work: Kárate to death in Torremolinos (2001), which in 2026 is a quarter of a century since its production. His argument continues to be difficult to summarize without giving up a chuckle: a crazy scientist, resurrected karatekas, a Catholic surfer and Jocantaro, a half octopus and half centollo creature, faced on the Costa del Sol. Written by Temboury along with Pablo Alvarez, the film made Torremolinos the stage of a delusion celebration of the B series cinema against all prognosis —or perhaps precisely because of it.— won the Public Prize for the Fantastic Film Week in Málaga in 2002 and ended up becoming a small cult work of independent Spanish cinema.

And 2026 also marks twenty years since they stole Hitler's spike (2006) he appeared at the Málaga Festival. Temboury again showed that, when it seemed impossible to overcome the title of his previous film, there was always a possibility. Malagueños Nazis, Amazonas, a scientist hidden in Torremolinos and Hitler's canopy preserved in an urn starred in a film that the director himself then defined in an insurmountable way: a mixture of Frankenstein and Mission: Impossible «at the rate of verdials».

But behind all the voluntary dandruff, the false blood and the impossible arguments there is something quite more serious: a huge love for making movies. Temboury shot Kárate to death in Torremolinos taking advantage of the holidays of his work and spent later weekends for a year riding it. His films were born of enthusiasm, of the collaboration of friends and of the obstination to bring forward stories that could hardly exist within the conventional channels of Spanish cinema.

Over time, that curiosity also led him to the documentary, but without abandoning his interest in alternative cultures, pioneers and characters living outside the dominant currents. In Skateboard (2013) he approached the origins of skate culture in Spain and in The first wave (2015) he recovered the memory of the Spanish surf pioneers. He also returned to one of the fundamental figures of his formation with Jess Franco's last film, thus prolonging the dialogue with the filmmaker who had marked his first steps.

Fantastic, terror, punk, surfing, martial arts, series B, cinema of exploitation and popular culture thus form the pieces of a path deeply linked to Málaga and the Costa del Sol. A film made from the margins, but also from a creative freedom that explains that his films continue to find spectators years after they were shot.

Thirty years of Psycho- lettes, twenty-five of Kárate to death in Torremolinos and twenty of them stole Hitler's spike. Three round anniversaries to celebrate a filmmaker who got something quite more difficult than making perfect movies: making movies that no one could confuse with those of another director.