Biutiful is a film directed and produced by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who also co-wrote it with Nicolás Giacobone and Armando Bó Jr. Produced by Cha Cha Cha Films and set in the city of Barcelona, it also had the support of Televisión Española and Televisión de Catalunya.

"After receiving a call from Cha Cha Films to offer me the role of shooting board artist for the sequences that were more complex to execute, I had an initial meeting with G. Iñárritu at the production company's headquarters in Barcelona. I must confess that my lack of film knowledge was considerable. I had no idea who Iñárritu was! Nor that the person I was meeting with was the director. However, I could sense that this was not just any production. That ignorance allowed me to have a first meeting with him on equal terms, without any nerves, during which I said things like that his face looked familiar and that we had probably worked together before :))) or that I was the fastest illustrator in the city :)). Over time, I have come to greatly appreciate his fantastic work, and I laugh—though not without a certain embarrassment—when I think back to that meeting. Most of the subsequent meetings to develop the shooting were with his then director of photography, the also highly acclaimed Rodrigo Prieto."