Emilio Hupe

Emilio Hupe, son of Francisco and Francisca and the youngest of three sisters, was born and raised in La Unión (Murcia). At the age of 18, he moved to the place everyone talked about on TV: Madrid. There, he studied Audiovisual Communication and realized that cinema would be the medium he would use to bring his ideas to life.

His uncle Pepe gave him his old video camera, a Sony Hi8, with which he began filming his family, friends, and the experiences of a small-town kid in a big city. Combining his writings and images, and after receiving a recorder from the Three Wise Men, he created his first documentary, Avísame si me muero (Let Me Know If I Die, 2020). This 43-minute documentary blends footage he filmed with recordings made by his father in 1989, creating a parallel between father and son.

“Both Antonio Conesa and I were tired of filming other people’s ideas, so we decided to shoot our own,” he explains about his second documentary, Sé de un lugar (I Know a Place, 2022). This documentary captures a conversation between two friends about the feelings of being away from home and the sense of detachment when returning. “This project was very rogue; we hit the streets with two miniDV cameras, a broomstick as a boom pole, and a recorder that almost caught fire before we even started,” says Emilio Hupe, one of its directors. Co-directed with Antonio Conesa, the documentary won the Isaac Peral Submarine Award at the Cartagena International Film Festival (FICC), the Audience Award at the Murcia International Film Festival (IBAFF), as well as the young jury and audience awards at El Meteorito Festival. It was also selected for several national festivals, including U22, CreaMurcia, Estrenarte, ÍntimaFest, among others.

Following the success of Sé de un lugar, Emilio Hupe and Antonio Conesa decided to establish the Murcia-based production company Pesahombre, aiming to produce their own documentaries under an official label. However, by the end of 2025, Emilio Hupe decided to go solo and parted ways with Pesahombre.

After various ups and downs and many unfinished projects, Emilio focused on his new documentary, El viento que golpea mi ventana (The Wind That Strikes My Window, 2024). Filmed in one week and edited over the course of a year, it tells the story of his paternal great-grandfather, a miner, father of five children, who died of silicosis on December 24, 1953. The filmmaker portrays his parents, cousins, and uncles to reconstruct his great-grandfather's final moments. Emilio develops the central theme through interviews unrelated to his great-grandfather, creating, through chance, a parallel between death and mining.

After gathering dust for a year, Mubox Studio took charge of distributing the documentary, which had its world premiere at the Navarra International Film Festival (Punto de Vista). It was later selected for the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival and the Barcelona Independent Film Festival (D'A), where it won the award for Best Short Film.

Currently, as of May 2025, Emilio Hupe is developing a zine titled Bolsas (Bags) with Makas and writing his first feature film, La muerte de los cuatro karatecas (The Death of the Four Karatekas), in a notebook he always carries with him.