Agustí Villaronga

Agustí Villaronga Riutort (Catalan pronunciation: [əɣusˈti βiʎəˈɾoŋɡə]; born 4 March 1953)[1] is a Balearic Spanish film director, screenwriter and actor.[2] He has directed seven feature films, a documentary, three projects for television and three shorts. His film El niño de la luna was entered into the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.[3]

This article uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Villaronga and the second or maternal family name is Riutort.
Agustí Villaronga
Born (1953-03-04) 4 March 1953
Majorca, Spain
OccupationFilm director, screenwriter, actor
Years active1976–present

In 2011 he won the Goya Award for Best Director for Pa negre (Black Bread). The film was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards,[4] but it did not make the final shortlist.[5]

Life and career

Agustí Villaronga was born on 4 March 1953 in Palma, his grandparents had been itinerant puppeteers and his father was a child of the Spanish Civil War, a fact that would resurface repeatedly in the director's filmography.[6] 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 Tras el cristal, 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. Tras el cristal 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, El niño de la Luna (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 Andaluz, produced by Segetel and the MoMa of New York city. For some years Villaronga tried unsuccessfully to find financing to adapt a novel by Mercè Rodoreda, Muerte en Primavera. Instead he had to take some commission works. One of these was El pasajero clandestino, a made for television project that lacked the personal characteristics of his filmography.

Called by actress María Barranco, Villaronga directed 99.99 a horror film more in synch with his themes, and that won some awards in festivals specialized in fantastic cinema. 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 in a sanitary of tubercular patiences. 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 En la mente del asesino. In 2005 he directed a music video for French superstar Mylène Farmer's song Fuck Them All.[7] In 2007 he made Después de la lluvia, a made for television project adapting a stage play. It was only until 2010 with Pa negre, when Villaronga finally achieved wider appeal. This film, winner of nine Goya Award including best film and best director, tells the story of an elven 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 Pá negre'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 is openly gay.[8]

Filmography as director
Year English title Original title Notes
1986 In a Glass Cage Tras el cristal Manfred Salzberg Award at the Berlin film festival
1989 Moon Child El niño de la luna
1992 Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain Al-Andalus Documentary
1995 The Stowaway El pasajero clandestino Made for television
1997 99.9 99.9
2000 The Sea El Mar Based on a novel by Blai Bonet.
2002 Aro Tolbukhin in the Mind of a Killer Aro Tolbukhin. En la mente del asesino Co-directed with Isaac Pierre Racine and Lydia Zimmermann.
2007 After the rain Després de la pluja Made for television
2010 Black Bread Pa Negre Winner of nine Goya Awards, including best film, best director and best adapted screenplay.
2012 A Letter to Evita Una carta para Evita TV series, 2 episodes; Gaudí Award 2014 for the best TV movie; at Biarritz International Festival of Audiovisual Programming 2013 two FIPA d'Or awards to Julieta Cardinali as the best actress and to Alfred Pérez, Roger Danès and Agustí Villaronga for the best script; at Monte-Carlo TV Festival 2013 Golden Nymph(s) to Julieta Cardinali for outstanding actress in a mini-series and to Teresa Enrich, Agustí Villaronga, Copia Cero Producciones, Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), Televisió de Catalunya (TV3) for outstanding mini-series[9]
2017 Uncertain Glory Incerta Glòria Based on the novel Uncertain Glory of Joan Sales.

Other projects
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References
  1. "Agustí Villaronga". AlloCiné (in French). Retrieved 2 March 2016.
  2. "Agustí Villaronga". spainisculture. Retrieved 18 November 2011.
  3. "Festival de Cannes: Moon Child". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 1 August 2009.
  4. ""PA NEGRE" REPRESENTARÁ A ESPAÑA EN LOS OSCAR". CBC. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
  5. "9 Foreign Language Films Vie for Oscar". Archived from the original on 21 May 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
  6. Levine, Sydney (11 January 2012). "The Secret of Black Bread". IndieWire. Retrieved 7 July 2016. Nor was [Black Bread] Villaronga's first film about children in the post Spanish Civil War era. [The Sea], In a Glass Cage and [Aro Tolbukhin. En la mente del asesino] all spoke of the consequences of the war, the perversions of war which changes the nautre of human beings, now, after, in the future and before. The perversions of war most interests Villaronga.
  7. Julien AUTIER; Philippe LEZE; Guillaume DATEZ & Sarah HOFER. "Mylene.Net - Le site référence sur Mylène Farmer". mylene.net. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
  8. "Darkness in Berlin". The Advocate. 11 April 2000. p. 46. Retrieved 20 January 2013.
  9. awards at IMDb
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