The emblematic filmmaker Agustí Villaronga, three times winner of the Gaudí award in 2011 and one of the cult Spanish directors and screenwriters, died this Sunday at the age of 69, a victim of cancer, according to various international media reports.
Director of classic works such as “El niño de la lluvia”, “Tras el cristal” and the trilogy “Pa negre” about the Spanish Civil War, Villaronga made his professional debut as a theater actor in the company of Nuria Espert, encouraged by the Argentine director Víctor García, who died in 1982. He worked with them for three years, representing works such as Lorca’s “Yerma” throughout Europe and America, a role that allowed him to establish contact with the world of cinema.
His first feature film was “Behind the glass”, a film directed in 1986 that ventured into psychological terror with the performances of Marisa Paredes and Günter Meisner. His debut as a director was quite a revolution, since it was discovered that he had a powerful poetic and visual imagination.
Agustí Villaronga has passed away today at the age of 69, the victim of a long illness. The Mallorcan director leaves an indelible cinematographic legacy led by the unforgettable and multi-award-winning Pa negre (2010).
✍️The obituary of Leonor Mayor (@leoncita1) ?
— The Vanguard (@LaVanguardia) January 22, 2023
Regarding his debut feature, the newspaper El Mundo pointed out: “Few debuts have made Spanish cinema so extraordinary. And even brutal. Behind the glass was a revolution due to the strangeness with which he looked at and questioned the public. In a few years in which Spanish cinematography was still the territory of a prestigious art committed to adapting literary works and composing murky allegories of the past, and when the generation of those who would embrace genre cinema had not yet been born, Villaronga’s proposal it exploded on the screen as only the then incipient work of Almodóvar was beginning to do».
Three years later he premiered “El niño de la luna”, a science fiction film with Maribel Martin and Lucia Bosé that won the Goya award for original script.
Later he made the documentary “Al Andalus” (1992), produced by the MOMA in New York; “The clandestine passenger” (1996); “99.9” (1997, Silver Mélies for the best European fantasy film at the Sitges Festival); and “El mar” (2000, Award for independent and new creation cinema in Berlin and best film at the Melilla Festival).
The award-winning “Pa negre” (2010), adaptation of two novels by Emili Teixidor (“Pa negre” and “Retrat d’un assassin d’ocells”) and starring, among others, Laia Marull, Sergi López and Eduard Fernández, he swept the Goya awards (9 statuettes he won out of 14 to which he opted).
«At the age of 13 my father went to war. I collected movie cards with him and in one of his diaries he described his passion for cinema. All of that influenced, at the age of 14 I already wanted to be a film director”
Our last talk with Agustí Villaronga ?https://t.co/AXrJFAypQ6 pic.twitter.com/z6IzIiGtJa
— The cinema in the SER (@ElCineEnLaSER) January 22, 2023
At the Gaudí gala he experienced success again, with 13 awards out of the 15 for which he was nominated. In addition, he received the Jules Verne Award from the Spanish Film Festival of the French city of Nantes (2011).
His films went through festivals such as Montreal, Toronto, Rome, Havana or Sitges. Villaronga collected the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts on December 1, 2022.
During his prolific career, the filmmaker born on March 4, 1953 in Palma de Mallorca had ties to Cuba. In 2015, he directed “The King of Havana,” based on the homonymous novel by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. In 2017 he presented “Uncertain Glory”, a film about the human conflicts of the Spanish Civil War.
His latest film, “El vientre del mar”, was presented in 2017 and won the Biznaga de Oro for best film and the best director award at the Malaga Festival, as well as the Critics Award at the International Film Festival of Moscow, and was a candidate for a Goya in the category of best adapted screenplay.
Villaronga leaves his latest work “Loli Tormenta” unreleased, written with Mario Torrecillas based on an original plot by the latter. Filmed in different locations in Barcelona and starring Susi Sánchez, it is her first foray into the world of comedy and is scheduled to be released this year.
Agustí Villaronga, who also served as a professor of Image, journalist, artistic director, decorator and video maker, received the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts on December 1 from the hands of King Felipe VI.
OnCuba/EFE Writing
