Agustà Villaronga Riutort (; 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.
In 2011 he won the
Goya Award for Best Director
The Goya Award for Best Director (Spanish: ''Premio Goya a la mejor dirección'') is one of the Goya Awards, Spain's principal national film awards. The category has been presented ever since the first edition of the Goya Awards. Fernando Fernán ...
for ''
Black Bread
Rye bread is a type of bread made with various proportions of flour from rye grain. It can be light or dark in color, depending on the type of flour used and the addition of coloring agents, and is typically denser than bread made from wheat ...
''. The Catalan-language film was selected as the Spanish entry for the
Best Foreign Language Film
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the
84th Academy Awards
The 84th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2011 in the United States and took place on February 26, 2012, at the Hollywood and Highland Center Theatre in H ...
,
but it did not make the final shortlist.
Life and career
Agustà 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
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
, a fact 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
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. For some years Villaronga tried unsuccessfully to find financing to adapt a novel by
Mercè Rodoreda
Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguà (; 10 October 1908 – 13 April 1983) was a Catalan novelist.
She is considered the most influential contemporary Catalan language writer, as evidenced by the references of other authors in her work and the internation ...
,
''La mort i la primavera''. Instead he had to take some commission works. One of these was ''
El pasajero clandestino
''El pasajero clandestino'' ( ca, El passatger clandestÃ) is a 1995 French-Spanish drama television film directed by Agustà Villaronga. It is adapted from the Georges Simenon novel of the same name and has a runtime of 96 minutes.Benavent, Fran ...
'', an adaptation of a
Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (; 13 February 1903 – 4 September 1989) was a Belgian writer. He published nearly 500 novels and numerous short works, and was the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret.
Early life and education ...
novel, that lacked the personal characteristics of his filmography.
Called by actress
MarÃa Barranco
MarÃa de los Remedios Barranco GarcÃa (born 11 June 1961) better known as MarÃa Barranco is a Spanish actress, who has won two Goya Awards for Best Supporting Actress.
Biography
MarÃa de los Remedios Barranco GarcÃa was born on 11 June ...
, 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
EL, El or el may refer to:
Religion
* El (deity), a Semitic word for "God"
People
* EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer
* El DeBarge, music artist
* El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...
'', 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
Lydia Martina Zimmermann Kuoni (born 30 December 1966 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain) is a Spanish Catalan actress and film director.Aroca, MarÃa Victoria. Lydia Zimmermann, sencillez escogida»Archive. ''S Moda El PaÃs'' (in Spanish). 7 Janua ...
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
Mylène Jeanne Gautier (; born 12 September 1961), known professionally as Mylène Farmer (), is a Canadian-born French singer, songwriter, occasional actress, writer, and entrepreneur. Having sold more than 30 million records in France, she is ...
'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
Rye bread is a type of bread made with various proportions of flour from rye grain. It can be light or dark in color, depending on the type of flour used and the addition of coloring agents, and is typically denser than bread made from wheat ...
'', when Villaronga finally achieved wider appeal. This film, winner of nine
Goya Award
The Goya Awards ( es, Premios Goya) are Spain's main national annual film awards, commonly referred to as the Academy Awards of Spain.
The awards were established in 1987, a year after the founding of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sci ...
s 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
Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy.
Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...
's countryside discovers the world of lies around him.
Villaronga followed ''Black Breads success with ''A Letter to Evita'', a TV miniseries co-produced by TV3, which recounts a real episode in the life of
Eva Perón
MarÃa Eva Duarte de Perón (; ; 7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952), better known as just Eva Perón or by the nickname Evita (), was an Argentine politician, activist, actress, and philanthropist who served as First Lady of Argentina from June 19 ...
while visiting Spain in the late 1940s.
Villaronga was openly gay.
He died on 22 January 2023 in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
, at the age of 69. At the time of his death, he had one project, ''
Loli Tormenta'', 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 as director
Other projects
* ''Anta mujer'' (1976) - Short
* (1980) - Short
* ''Laberint'' (1980) - Short
* ''
Fuck Them All'' (2005) - Music video for
Mylène Farmer
Mylène Jeanne Gautier (; born 12 September 1961), known professionally as Mylène Farmer (), is a Canadian-born French singer, songwriter, occasional actress, writer, and entrepreneur. Having sold more than 30 million records in France, she is ...
Accolades
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Villaronga, Agusti
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
LGBT film directors
Spanish LGBT actors
Spanish LGBT screenwriters
Male screenwriters
People from Palma de Mallorca
Spanish-language film directors
Spanish male film actors
Spanish male writers
20th-century Spanish screenwriters
20th-century Spanish male writers
21st-century LGBT people
21st-century Spanish screenwriters