Misplaced Pages

Agustí Villaronga
Villaronga in 2020
Born	Agustí Villaronga Riutort (1953-03-04)4 March 1953 Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Died	22 January 2023(2023-01-22) (aged 69) Barcelona, Spain
Occupation(s)	Film director, screenwriter, actor
Years active	1976–2023

Agustí Villaronga Riutort (Catalan pronunciation: [əɣusˈti βiʎəˈɾoŋɡə]; 4 March 1953 – 22 January 2023) was a Spanish film director, screenwriter and actor. He directed several feature films, a documentary, three projects for television and three shorts. His film Moon Child was entered into the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.

His auteur approach to filmmaking was described by ScreenDaily as demostrative of "a keen insight into human pain and cruelty". In 2011 he won the Goya Award for Best Director for Black Bread. The Catalan-language film was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.

Life and career

Agustí Villaronga was born on 4 March 1953 in Palma. His grandparents were itinerant puppeteers and his father was a child of the Spanish Civil War, a background that would resurface repeatedly in the director's filmography. Since childhood, his father encouraged his love for films and from early in his life he wanted to become a film director. He worked as an actor and made some shorts.

Villaronga made his directorial debut in 1986 with the film In a Glass Cage, which was selected by the Berlin film festival receiving critical praise and many awards. The plot follows a former Nazi doctor, now paralyzed and depending on an iron lung to live, who begins to be taken care of by a young man, one of the children he abused during the war. In a Glass Cage already shows some of the key elements in Villaronga's filmography: a disturbed childhood marked by violence, an early discovery of sexuality.

His second film, Moon Child (1989), is about a child who goes to Africa to join a tribe awaiting the arrival of white child God. In 1992 he made a documentary, Al-Andalus, produced by Sogetel and the MoMa of New York City. For some years Villaronga tried unsuccessfully to find financing to adapt a novel by Mercè Rodoreda, La mort i la primavera. Instead he had to take some commission works. One of these was El pasajero clandestino, an adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel, that lacked the personal characteristics of his filmography.

Called by actress María Barranco, Villaronga directed the 1997 horror film 99.9, which won the award for Best Cinematography at the 1997 Sitges Film Festival. In 2000, Villaronga came back with a project of his own: El mar, a story set in Mallorca about three former childhood friends, traumatized by the violence they experienced during the Spanish Civil War, that are reunited ten years later as young adults. The key elements in Villaronga's filmography are present in this story: childhood, sexual awakening, homosexuality and violence.

In 2002, Villaronga co-directed with Lydia Zimmermann and Isaac Pierre Racine the film Aro Tolbukhin: In the Mind of a Killer. In 2005 he directed a music video for French superstar Mylène Farmer's song Fuck Them All. In 2007 he made Después de la lluvia, a made for television project adapting a stage play. It was only until 2010 with Black Bread, when Villaronga finally achieved wider appeal. This film, winner of nine Goya Awards including best film and best director, tells the story of an eleven year old boy who growing up in the harsh period of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in Catalonia's countryside discovers the world of lies around him.

Villaronga followed Black Bread's success with A Letter to Evita, a TV miniseries co-produced by TV3, which recounts a real episode in the life of Eva Perón while visiting Spain in the late 1940s.

Villaronga was openly gay. He died on 22 January 2023 in Barcelona, at the age of 69. At the time of his death, he had one project, Stormy Lola, outstanding. It was shot in 2022, and was his first comedy film.

Villaronga received the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts on 1 December 2022.

Filmography

Film

Short film

Television

Accolades

References

1. ^ "Muere el director Agustí Villaronga ('Pa Negre') a los 69 años". Cinemanía. 22 January 2023 – via 20minutos.es.
2. "Agustí Villaronga". AlloCiné (in French). Retrieved 2 March 2016.
3. "Agustí Villaronga". spainisculture. Retrieved 18 November 2011.
4. "Festival de Cannes: Moon Child". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 1 August 2009.
5. Mayorga, Emilio (22 January 2023). "Agustí Villaronga, 'Black Bread', 'The Sea' director, dies aged 69". ScreenDaily.
6. ""PA NEGRE" REPRESENTARÁ A ESPAÑA EN LOS OSCAR". CBC. 28 September 2011. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
7. "9 Foreign Language Films Vie for Oscar". Archived from the original on 18 May 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
8. Levine, Sydney (11 January 2012). "The Secret of Black Bread". IndieWire. Retrieved 7 July 2016. Nor was Villaronga's first film about children in the post Spanish Civil War era. , In a Glass Cage and all spoke of the consequences of the war, the perversions of war which changes the nature of human beings, now, after, in the future and before. The perversions of war most interests Villaronga.
9. "EL NINO DE LA LUNA". Cannes Festival. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
10. "Agustí Villaronga, el director de la mirada poética". RTVE (in Spanish). 22 July 2011. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
11. "El 'GOYA 2011 Mejor Dirección' ha sido para Agustí Villaronga « Blog del Instituto Cervantes Nueva York" (in Spanish). Retrieved 22 January 2023.
12. Lardín, Rubén. "Agustí Villaronga". Vice (in Spanish). Retrieved 22 January 2023.
13. Colmena, Enrique. "El pasajero clandestino - Criticalia.com". Criticalia (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 January 2023.
14. "El Pasajero Clandestino". Catálogo de Cine Español - I.C.A.A.
15. Torreiro, Casimiro (19 October 1997). "El festival de cine de Sitges se clausura con unos premios polémicos". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 22 November 2022.
16. The Sea, Rotten Tomatoes, retrieved 23 January 2023
17. ^ "Darkness in Berlin". The Advocate. 11 April 2000. p. 46. Retrieved 20 January 2013.
18. Julien AUTIER; Philippe LEZE; Guillaume DATEZ & Sarah HOFER. "Mylene.Net - Le site référence sur Mylène Farmer". mylene.net. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
19. Mayorga, Emilio (22 January 2023). "Agustí Villaronga, 'Black Bread', 'The Sea' director, dies aged 69". ScreenDaily.
20. "Muere a los 69 años el cineasta Agustí Villaronga, director de 'Pa negre'". Onda Cero. 22 January 2023.
21. "Agustí Villaronga rueda su primera comedia con Susi Sánchez, "Loli Tormenta"". Cadena COPE. 13 July 2022.
22. "El director de cine Agustí Villaronga recoge la Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes". Europa Press. 1 December 2022.
23. ^ "Agustí Villaronga - Filmography". BFI. Archived from the original on 19 April 2017. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
24. "AL-ANDALUS. LAS ARTES ISLAMICAS EN ESPAÑA". Catálogo de Cinespañol I.C.A.A. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
25. Lodge, Guy (1 October 2015). "Film Review: 'The King of Havana'". Variety.
26. "INCIERTA GLORIA". Catálogo de Cinespañol I.C.A.A. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
27. Hopewell, John (4 October 2019). "Agusti Villaronga's 'Born a King' Catches Box Office Fire in UAE, Saudi Arabia". Variety.
28. Young, Neil (25 April 2021). "'The Belly Of The Sea': Moscow Review". ScreenDaily.
29. "Muere el cineasta Agustí Villaronga, director de 'Pa Negre', a los 69 años en Barcelona". El Confidencial. 22 January 2023.
30. "El niño de la luna". premiosgoya.com. Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
31. "III Gaudí Awards". www.academiadelcinema.cat. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
32. "Pa negre". premiosgoya.com. Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
33. "Nominaciones a los Premios Gaudí 2016". Fotogramas. 30 December 2015.
34. "Todos los ganadores de los Gaudí 2016". El Periódico de Catalunya. 1 February 2016.
35. "El Rey de La Habana". premiosgoya.com. Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
36. "Totes les nominacions als Gaudí 2018". 3/24. 28 December 2017 – via Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals.
37. "'Estiu 1993' triomfa en uns premis Gaudí marcats per l'excepcionalitat política". VilaWeb (in Catalan). 28 January 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
38. "El vientre del mar". premiosgoya.com. Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
39. "Los Gaudí encumbran a Neus Ballús y Clara Roquet por 'Sis dies corrents' y 'Libertad'". Cine con Ñ. 7 March 2022.

External links

• Agustí Villaronga at IMDb

• 1953 births
• 2023 deaths
• 20th-century Spanish male actors
• Best Director Goya Award winners
• Film directors from Catalonia
• Catalan-language film directors
• French-language film directors
• Spanish gay writers
• Spanish gay actors
• Spanish LGBTQ film directors
• Gay screenwriters
• Spanish LGBTQ screenwriters
• Spanish male screenwriters
• Actors from Palma de Mallorca
• Spanish-language film directors
• Spanish male film actors
• 20th-century Spanish screenwriters
• 20th-century Spanish male writers
• 21st-century Spanish LGBTQ people
• 21st-century Spanish screenwriters