The Festival de Málaga remembers the figure of Agustí Villaronga with the premiere of a copy of his harrowing film Tras el Cristal, restored by the Filmoteca de Catalunya
The actress Marisa Paredes, star of the film, and Esteve Riambau, director of the cultural institution, attended the premiere
The 27th Festival de Málaga has celebrated the figure of the filmmaker Agustí Villaronga with the screening of Tras el cristal (1986), a film that marked a before and after not only in the career of the director, but also of all the protagonists of this thrilling feature that premiered at the Berlin Festival.
The presentation of the film, in a special session at Cine Albéniz, was attended by the actress Marisa Paredes, star of the film; its producer, Teresa Enrich, and Esteve Riambau, director of the Filmoteca de Catalunya, the organisation in charge of the restoration of a film that, to this day, continues to thrill its audience, as the public commented in the discussion following the screening.
Tras el cristal tells the story of the ex-Nazi officer Klaus (Günter Meisner), who, after torturing, murdering and abusing a multitude of children in the concentration camps, suffers an accident that forces him to live in an iron lung, having to be cared for by a mysterious young man who gradually plunges into madness after learning about his past. ‘When we embarked on this adventure, we didn’t know what we were getting into’, said Teresa Enrich, who produced the film that she claims to have gone to so many more festivals with than any other she has worked on, as well as pointing out some of the difficulties encountered during its production.
Marisa Paredes also recalled the filming to praise Agustí Villaronga, who offered a part in a cast that for her meant the leap to cinema and an enormous boost for her later career. ‘I saw that it could be done and that I could do it’, confessed the actress who, until the proposal, was a relevant figure in theatre, but not on the big screen, although ‘talent, weighty reasons and solidity’ were the factors that pushed her to participate in the project.
‘This film is the only one that is truly his in its entirety’, said the director of the Filmoteca de Catalunya about Agustí Villaronga, to whom he paid his own tribute, while at the same time calling for the existence of spaces that bring this type of cinema to the public.
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