Argentine writer and director Edgardo Cozarinsky has died at the age of 85

Edgardo Cozarinsky left Argentina in 1974 before returning there in 1989.

The Argentine writer, screenwriter and director Edgardo Cozarinsky, who lived part of his life in France, died on Sunday June 2 in Buenos Aires at the age of 85, cultural authorities announced on Monday. Culture Secretary Leonardo Cifelli in a statement announced the death “an essential personality of our culture, endowed with a unique intelligence and artistic sensitivity, (who) knew how to give Argentines an important place in cinema and literature with a universal scope.”

Born in Buenos Aires in 1939, close in his youth to emblematic Argentinian authors like Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares, frequenting Jorge Luis Borges, Egdardo Cozarinsky published around twenty books, between novels, essays, sometimes mixing these genres, and stories.

In 1974, political instability in Argentina saw him exiled to Paris, where he remained until 1989, and developed a career in cinema and television. He explores in particular documentaries on artists or writers (Stefan Zweig, Jean Cocteau) or writers in history (One man’s war1982), but also feature-length fiction films, visiting, sometimes darkly, the Argentina of yesterday or today: Warriors and captives (1990), Night watch (2005).

Permanently resettled in Argentina, he fell in love with tango, which had become fashionable again, leading him to a book of chronicles and tales on the theme (Milongas2007) and a documentary, Tango Desire.

The Argentine novelist and poet Pedro Mairal paid tribute to the memory of Cozarinsky on Monday June 3 “with whom several people go: the writer, the filmmaker, the playwright, the actor, the milonguero” (tango dancer, editor’s note).