Francisco Javier García de la Camacha Gutiérrez-Ambrossi (born 24 June 1984), better known as Javier Ambrossi, is a Spanish actor, stage, film and television director, and writer. He is best known for creating and directing the musical La llamada and its film adaptation together with Javier Calvo, as well as the television series Paquita Salas, Veneno and La mesías.[1]
Since 2013, Ambrossi has co-directed La llamada at the Teatro Lara in Madrid, a musical he created alongside Javier Calvo.[5] In August 2015, the Mexican production of La llamada opened at the López Tarso theatre in Mexico City with a Mexican cast.[6] In September 2017, the film adaptation of La llamada, also co-directed by Ambrossi and Calvo, premiered in Spain.[7] It is centered around two teenage girls attending a rural Catholic summer camp.[2] The English version of the film is known as Holy Camp!.
In July 2016, the web television series Paquita Salas, created by Ambrossi and Calvo, premiered on Flooxer.[8] 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.[2] There are currently three seasons with a fourth pending release. The comedy show is named for its mature female protagonist, who is a failing 50 year old showbiz agent and is played by Brays Efe.[9] The mockumentary style of the series was very original in Spain, who doesn't have a tradition of short-form sitcoms.[9]
Along with Calvo, Ambrossi was listed 47th in El Mundo's list of most important LGBT people in Spain in 2017.[10] 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".[9]
From October 2017 to February 2018, Ambrossi and Calvo appeared on the reality television talent competition show Operación Triunfo as the teachers of acting in the "Academy".
In 2020, Ambrossi and Calvo created the biographical television limited series Veneno, which aired on Atresplayer Premium and HBO Max.[11] 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.[12] 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.[2][13] The show was picked as one of Variety's best international series in 2020.[14]
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.[15] 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."[15]
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.[18] 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.[19]
Ambrossi and Calvo also created the drama television series Vestidas de azul for Atresplayer Premium, a spin-off and continuation for Veneno in 2023.[20] 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.[14]
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 idealogical constructs in relation to gender, sexuality, and identity".[22]
Ambrossi has been in a relationship with actor and director Javier Calvo since 2010.[23] Together, the two are universally known as "los Javis" and have become public figures with active social media followings.[2] They spontaneously proposed to each other at the Capitol Cinema in Madrid during the premiere event for one of their films.[9] Both of them have the phrase "Lo hacemos y ya vemos", which translates to "we'll do it and we'll see" and is the title of a song from La llamada, tattooed on their forearms.[9]
