Alejandro Brugués

Alejandro Brugués. Cuban film director and screenwriter. He graduated in screenwriting from the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños. Shortly after graduating, he began his work as a screenwriter for his country's cinema, until in 2008 he made his first feature film as director: Personal Belongings.

Cuban by nationality, he was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina but grew up and studied in Cuba, so he considers himself Argentine-Cuban.

He studied Advertising, Psychology, and Philology, until (finally) graduating in screenwriting from the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños, EICTV, where he also took the workshop "How to Tell a Story" taught by Gabriel García Márquez.

He immediately began his career as a screenwriter, working on the feature films Dancing Cha Cha Cha, Three Times Two, and Fruits in the Café.

He finally decided to make the leap to directing in 2006 with the feature film Personal Belongings, for which he was also the screenwriter, and with which he obtained the Emilio Riera Award, given by the Cinema in Construction section at the Guadalajara International Film Festival.

In 2011 he completed an ambitious project, the first Cuban film about zombies. A postmodern-inspired film that draws on cinematic references such as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead and the Evil Dead trilogy by Sam Raimi.

Filmography
2004: Three Times Two (Second story screenplay)
2005: Fruits in the Café (Screenplay)
2005: Dancing Cha Cha Cha (Screenplay).
2008: Personal Belongings (Screenplay and Direction)
2011: Juan de los Muertos (Screenplay and Direction)

Awards and Recognition
Emilio García Riera Award. 22 Guadalajara International Film Festival, 2007.
Award for Best Fiction Feature Film Project. 5th International Poor Cinema Festival. 2007.
Third Coral Prize for Opera Prima. 29 International Festival of New Latin American Cinema. Havana, 2007
CYBERVOTE for Best Opera Prima. 29 International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.
Special Jury Prize, 6th International Poor Cinema Festival, Gibara, 2008.

Although he has participated in different foreign productions, Alejandro Brugués, founder of the independent Havana production company Producciones de la Quinta Avenida, remains linked to Cuba, where "The Companion" was filmed, in which he participated as a screenwriter, and which premiered in 2016.

Trained at the San Antonio de los Baños School (EICTV), Brugués has always declared himself a lover of genre cinema. "When I was a child I don't remember well how they were obtained, I remember that the second film I had in my life was "The Evil Dead" by Sam Raimi. Everyone lent movies and they were almost always martial arts films, I remember we discovered naked women in Bruce Lee's movies. I saw "Psycho II" before seeing the first one; everything was quite disorganized. Later, thanks to the trips my parents made, I had the luck to see films everywhere we went, almost always horror and science fiction."

So, he was already willing to work in any country, and especially in North America: "It interests me because it's what caught my attention as a child, but I still have things left to say about Cuba and besides I have this dream of Latin American genre cinema and for now I'm prioritizing these things. All filmmakers in the world work everywhere. One makes cinema where you find a good story. If tomorrow I come up with a good story in another country I won't do it where good stories take me, he has stated.