He was one of the most highly appraised contemporary cinematographers,[1] having a working collaboration with filmmakers François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Robert Benton, while winning an Oscar for Best Cinematography for Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven.
Néstor Almendros Cuyás was born in Barcelona, Spain, but at the age of 18, he moved to Cuba to join his exiled anti-Francisco Franco father.
In the early seventies, he also started working with François Truffaut, Barbet Schroeder and other directors.
These include the four feature length works from Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales series, La Collectionneuse (1967), My Night at Maud’s (1969), Claire’s Knee (1970), and Love in the Afternoon (1972), in addition to La Marquise d'O... (1976), Perceval le Gallois (1978), and Pauline at the Beach (1983).
In his later years, Almendros co-directed two documentaries about the human rights situation in Cuba: Mauvaise Conduite (1984) (Improper Conduct) about the persecution of gay people in Cuba; and Nadie escuchaba (Nobody Was Listening), about the alleged arrest, imprisonment and torture of former comrades of Fidel Castro.