Alonso Varela

Alonso Varela is a Spanish filmmaker, Visual Effects Supervisor, and the founder and CEO of Jimsonweed Studios. With more than 25 years of experience across the international film and television industry, his career has taken him across four continents, working alongside filmmakers, studios, and creative teams on some of the world’s most ambitious productions.

He founded Jimsonweed Studios in Asturias with a clear purpose: to bring home the knowledge, experience, and international perspective gathered throughout his career and use them to help build a lasting audiovisual industry in his region. Working in collaboration with local and regional institutions, Alonso is driving the development of an Audiovisual Hub capable of attracting productions, creating skilled employment, nurturing new talent, and connecting Asturias with the international screen industries. Jimsonweed represents both a creative platform and a long-term commitment to giving back to the place where his own story began.

Alonso’s work in visual effects has been recognised at the highest level of the industry. His contribution to Napoleon (2023) formed part of the film’s Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects, while his supervisory work on The Witcher Season 3 received the BAFTA Television Craft Award for Special, Visual & Graphic Effects. His work on The Boys Season 3 was shortlisted for Emmy consideration and received a Visual Effects Society nomination for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode.

Earlier in his career, Alonso was part of the Academy Award-winning visual effects team behind The Jungle Book (2016). He also contributed to two further Academy Award-winning films, Ex Machina and Avatar: The Way of Water, as well as six Academy Award-nominated productions, including The Martian, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and War for the Planet of the Apes.

Throughout his career, Alonso has approached visual effects as an integral part of filmmaking, working closely with directors to combine technical precision with narrative purpose and create imagery that integrates seamlessly with live action. After more than two decades immersed in the work of filmmakers from different cultures and creative traditions, that experience evolved naturally into the ambition to write, create, and direct stories of his own.

Since 2017, he has been developing ASTUR, an ambitious six-film saga rooted in the history, mythology, landscape, and cultural memory of Asturias. Its first chapter, ASTUR: The Roots Awaken, is currently in development and early pre-production. He is also the creator of MONDO, a 3D animated series he has been developing since 2020.

Through Jimsonweed Studios, Alonso brings together original intellectual property, filmmaking, education, and high-end visual effects within a single creative ecosystem. His ambition is not only to tell stories with an international reach, but to create the infrastructure, opportunities, and lasting legacy that will allow future generations to build those stories from Asturias.