Cuban-Argentine Filmmaker Alejandro Brugués Turns 50, 15 Years After 'Juan of the Dead'

August 22, 2026

Argentine-Cuban filmmaker Alejandro Brugués turned 50 on August 21, 2026. Born in Buenos Aires but raised and trained in Cuba, Brugués earned his screenwriting degree from the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV), where he also took Gabriel García Márquez's storytelling workshop.

After launching his career as a screenwriter on films including "Tres veces dos" and "Frutas en el café," he made his directorial debut in 2006 with "Personal Belongings." His breakthrough came in 2011 with "Juan of the Dead," billed as Cuba's first zombie film, privately financed with a $3 million budget and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. This year marks fifteen years since that premiere, which earned Brugués the Goya Award for Best Ibero-American Film in 2013.

Based in Los Angeles since the mid-2010s, Brugués has directed episodes and segments for platforms and series including "From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series," "Into the Dark," "50 States of Fright" and the horror anthology "Satanic Hispanics." His most recent project is the feature film "The Inheritance," originally produced for Netflix under the title "The Last Will and Testament of Charles Abernathy."

Despite his international career, the director has said in interviews that he still has Cuban stories left to tell and hopes to keep championing Latin American genre filmmaking.