Cuban actor and director Jorge Perugorría Rodríguez became the winner of the 2023 National Film Award at the end of March.
the Cuban Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, tweeted congratulations “His talent and acting work have been recognized in multiple national and international spaces. Millions of fans will celebrate this award”.
The award was presented to Perugorría during the celebrations for the 65th anniversary of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).
Born on August 13, 1965 in Havana, Pichi, as he is affectionately called by his friends, is considered the best-known Cuban male actor internationally.
He began his acting career in the theatre and after a brief stint in film and television, he won over the general public with the role of Diego in the ground breaking film ‘Fresa y Chocolate’ (1993), (the film was nominated for an Oscar), his first film success, directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío.
Since then, Perugorría has acted in more than 60 films, including Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che’; ‘Vertical Love’, by Arturo Sotto; ‘Waiting List’, by Juan Carlos Tabío; ‘Four Seasons in Havana’, and ‘Right of Asylum’, by Octavio Cortázar, among many others.
On television, in 2013 he starred in all three seasons of the series ‘Lynch’, produced by Fox Telecolombia, filmed in Colombia and Argentina.
He also paints and since 2001 he began to present exhibitions of his work in Cuba, Spain and the United States. At the end of 2015 he opened the Taller Gorría Gallery, a cultural project and art gallery based in Old Havana.
A dedicated cultural promoter, the actor currently presides over the annual Gibara International Film Festival, an event created by the late Cuban filmmaker Humberto Solás to promote low-budget cinema, which takes place in the eastern province of Holguín.
Last year he inaugurated the Caribbean Film and Environment Festival ‘Isla Verde’, based on the Isle of Youth, off the southern coast of Cuba, to take place each April.
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