Oscar Valdés was born on August 19, 1919, in Havana. He began his film training in the 1950s, at the Film Club of the Cultural Society Nuestro Tiempo. He began to work at ICAIC in 1961 as assistant director and made some didactic short films and notes for the Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano (newsreel). Between 1962 and 1963 he directed two short fiction films together with Humberto Solás. In 1965, he made his first documentary and in 1973 he directed the narrative feature film El extraño caso de Rachel K. Throughout his work, this remarkable documentary filmmaker manifest the exemplary characteristics of the so-called Cuban Documentary School. It stands out due to the effective combination of fiction and documentary, which is handled very smoothly. He died on February 4, 1990.