The director and screenwriter celebrates his 50th birthday this Friday. Born in Buenos Aires on August 21, 1976, the Cuban filmmaker is now one of the most distinctive voices in Latin American cinema.
Brugués arrived in cinema through an unconventional path: before graduating in Screenwriting from the International School of Cinema and Television (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños, he had studied Advertising, Psychology, and Philology.
In that same school, he participated in the workshop "How to Tell a Story," led by Gabriel García Márquez, an experience that would shape his understanding of cinematic narration.
His first steps in the industry were as a screenwriter, with credits in Cuban productions such as "Tres veces dos" (2004) and "Frutas en el café" (2005), until in 2006 he made the leap to directing with "Efectos personales," his first feature film, which garnered recognition at the festivals in Guadalajara, Havana, and Gibara.
The great milestone of his career would come in 2011 with «», regarded as the first Cuban zombie film.
The film tells the story of Juan, a middle-aged man from Havana, who decides to start a business to eliminate the zombies that have invaded the Cuban capital, turning the zombie apocalypse into a political and social satire of contemporary Cuba.
"Juan de los Muertos is a film about the love one has for Cuba," declared Brugués himself in interviews about the origin of the project.
Starring Alexis Díaz de Villegas, the film was showcased at the Toronto and Sitges festivals, won the Popularity Award at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, and in February 2013, it took home the Goya Award for Best Ibero-American Film.
Since then, Brugués has built an international career in English-language genre cinema while staying true to his Cuban identity.
Among his most recent works are the segment "E is for Equilibrium" from ABCs of Death 2 (2014); an episode of From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series (2015); the opening short of "Nightmare Cinema" (2018), and his involvement in "Satanic Hispanics," an anthology horror project that won the Best Direction award in the Horror Features category at Fantastic Fest 2022 and premiered in U.S. theaters in September 2023.
His most recent work as a director is "The Inheritance" (2024), a horror feature film released in July of that year.
At fifty years old, Brugués remains the Cuban filmmaker who proved it was possible to create genre cinema from the island, incorporating humor, criticism, and a lens that always focuses on the contradictions of Cuban society.
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