Javier Ambrossi

Francisco Javier García de la Camacha Gutiérrez-Ambrossi (born 24 June 1984), better known as Javier Ambrossi, is a Spanish writer, producer, director and actor. He is best known for forming a creative duo with his former partner Javier Calvo, with whom he wrote and directed the stage play La llamada and its film adaptation, as well as the television series Paquita Salas, Veneno and La mesías, and the film La bola negra, for which they won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director.

Early life Ambrossi was born in Madrid, the son of Francisco Javier García de la Camacha and wife Sofía Gutiérrez-Ambrossi. From a young age, he dreamed of being a writer. Ambrossi graduated with a degree in journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid and studied dramaturgy at the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático. His younger sister, Macarena García, is also an actress.

Career Ambrossi's career as an aspiring actor began in the early 2000s, as he took on many bit roles. In August 2015, the Mexican production of La llamada opened at the López Tarso theatre in Mexico City with a Mexican cast. Los Javis co-directed the film adaptation of La llamada, Holy Camp!, which premiered in September 2017. It is centered around two teenage girls attending a rural Catholic summer camp. The pair originally created the indie series as a way to hone their filmmaking skills, but due to its success, Netflix acquired the rights to air the second season of the series. The mockumentary style of the series was very original in Spain, who doesn't have a tradition of short-form sitcoms. They have been credited with pioneering a new model of authorship for popular film in Spain, and in 2020 El País described them as "an unstoppable millennial revolution". The series narrates the life of actress, celebrity, model, sex worker, and star, Cristina Ortiz, la Veneno, who was one of the first women to bring visibility to the trans community in Spain during the nineties and is based on Valeria Vegas's ¡Digo! Ni puta ni santa: Las memorias de la Veneno. When the first three episodes were released, they landed at the top of Spain's box office, and subscribers to Atresplayer increased by 42% with the show, which is watched ten times more than any other on the platform. The show was picked as one of Variety's best international series in 2020.

Veneno was the first project that Ambrossi and Calvo created under their own production company, Suma Latina Producciones. In 2021, they relaunched the company under the name Suma Content. The independent production company operating internationally and is based in Madrid. In an interview with Variety, Ambrossi explained, "At Suma Latina we were only able to do one production a year and we always had exclusive arrangements that limited what we could do. Suma Content was born for us to be free, no more exclusives." On 1 March 2021, Ambrossi was announced as a judge for Drag Race España, the Spanish version of the television drag queen competition Drag Race.

In 2023, the family thriller television series La mesías, created, written and directed by Ambrossi and Calvo for Movistar Plus+, was included out of competition in the official section of the 71st San Sebastián International Film Festival. Centered around the life of a man named Enric, who carries religious childhood trauma, the series is about how he is impacted by the viral video of a Christian pop music group, and it has been described as their most ambitious and complex project to date.

Ambrossi and Calvo also created the drama television series Vestidas de azul for Atresplayer Premium, a spin-off and continuation for Veneno in 2023. The show begins two years after Veneno when Valeria returns to Valencia and discovers a VHS copy of Antonio Giménez Rico's famous documentary Vestida de azul and looks to uncover what has happened to the six transgender women it features. "With the series, we’d like to convert the documentary’s protagonists into a mainstream phenomenon, giving them what they didn’t have in the past: Fame but also respect and affection," Ambrossi has explained.

On the whole, Ambrossi, along with Calvo, is bringing greater visibility to the LGBTQ+ community and related themes via his work in the mainstream media industry. There work has been described as "representative of a Spanish queer aesthetics which navigates between combative subversion and mainstream normalization" and as "changing hegemonic social and ideological constructs in relation to gender, sexuality, and identity".

Filmography

Awards and nominations Award Year Category Work Result Cannes Film Festival 2026 Best Director La bola negra CEC Awards 2018 Best Adapted Screenplay Holy Camp! Best New Director Feroz Awards 2017 Best Comedy Series Paquita Salas 2018 Best Comedy Film Holy Camp! 2019 Best Comedy Series Paquita Salas 2020 2021 Best Drama Series Veneno 2024 La mesías Best Screenplay in a Series 2026 Best Comedy Series Superstar Fotogramas de Plata 2018 Best Spanish Film Holy Camp! 2020 Best Spanish Series Veneno Gaudí Awards 2018 Best Non-Catalan Language Film Holy Camp! Audience Award Goya Awards 2018 Best Adapted Screenplay Holy Camp! Best New Director Iris Awards 2019 Best Screenplay Paquita Salas Best Director 2020 Veneno Critics' Award 2025 Best Screenplay – Fiction La mesías Best Direction – Fiction Best Production – Fiction Málaga Film Festival 2022 Málaga Talent Award Series Mania 2024 Best Directing La mesías

Personal life In 2012, Ambrossi started a relationship with actor and director Javier Calvo. Together, the two are universally known as "los Javis" and have become public figures with active social media followings.