Some of the best known films, whose screenplays he wrote, are Goya or the Hard Way to Enlightenment (1971), Amendment to the Law for the Defence of the State (1976), Stars in Her Hair, Tears in Her Eyes (1977), Boris I (1985) and After the End of the World (1998). In the 1990s he devoted his time to writing fiction and published the three novels Isaac's Torah, Far from Toledo and Farewell, Shanghai, receiving international literary recognition for the last two.
His books have been translated in many foreign languages, including in French, English, Russian, German, Spanish, and Italian.