Agustí Villaronga

Agustí Villaronga Riutort was born on 4 March 1953 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, into a family with a theatrical lineage—his grandparents were itinerant puppeteers and his father, a child of the Spanish Civil War, carried those traumatic memories into his upbringing. Encouraged by his father’s love of cinema, Villaronga dreamed of directing from an early age, later working as an actor and creating several short films that hinted at his emerging auteur voice. His debut feature, In a Glass Cage (1986), premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and earned critical praise for its stark portrayal of a paralyzed former Nazi doctor and the lingering shadows of wartime abuse, establishing recurring motifs of childhood trauma, sexual awakening, and violence that would define his oeuvre. Villaronga’s next major work, Moon Child (1989), was entered into the Cannes Film Festival, further cementing his reputation for confronting unsettling human experiences with lyrical intensity. Throughout the 1990s he explored diverse formats, directing the horror film 99.9 (1997) which won Best Cinematography at the Sitges Film Festival, the intimate drama El mar (2000) about three Mallorcan friends scarred by civil war, and co‑directing the ambitious Aro Tolbukhin: In the Mind of a Killer (2002).** His breakout mainstream success arrived with Black Bread (2010), a Goya‑winning masterpiece that captured post‑war Catalonia through the eyes of an eleven‑year‑old boy, earning nine Goya Awards including Best Film and Best Director and representing Spain at the 84th Academy Awards. **Villaronga remained prolific in television, creating the miniseries A Letter to Evita and numerous documentaries, while openly gay, he championed LGBTQ representation in Spanish cinema. In his final years he embarked on his first comedy, Stormy Lola, filmed in 2022, and was honored with the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts on 1 December 2022, moments before his death in Barcelona on 23 January 2023.