Augusto Góngora Dies: Acclaimed Latin-American Journalist & Subject Of Sundance-Winning Documentary ‘The Eternal Memory’ Was 71

Augusto Góngora, the journalist, author and television host documented in the Sundance winning film The Eternal Memory, is being mourned in his native Chile after his death at 71.

The film’s Oscar-nominated director, Maite Alberdi, confirmed to Deadline that Góngora succumbed to complications of Alzhemier’s on May 19. The Eternal Memory, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary at Sundance, chronicles the love story between the journalist and his wife, actress and academic Paulina Urrutia. “La Pauli,” as Góngora referred to his partner, took care of him after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at 62.

“It was unexpectedly painful” to learn of Góngora’s death, Alberdi told Deadline. “People tell you that Alzheimer’s is a slow death. So you think that you are prepared because you have been living for many years with the disappearance of that person. But it was as unexpected as any other [person’s passing]. It was really, really painful for me, for Paulina, for their friends.”

Following word of Góngora’s death, Chilean President Gabriel Boric praised him as “a great journalist who brought the culture of our country to the highest level.” In an interview on Chilean television, Minister of Culture Jaime de Aguirre called his death “a huge loss… His work, his life were key to the recent history of our country.”

After his diagnosis, Góngora made the decision to publicly reveal his condition. In a similar spirit, he and his partner Urrutia agreed to allow Alberdi to document the loving bond they maintained even as the disease inexorably progressed, gradually reducing his physical capacities and cognitive function.

“He understood so deeply that his role was to communicate, and he was very conscious of that,” Alberdi said. “He was like, ‘I have to tell everybody because I always showed the life of others [through reportage], so I’m going to show my own life…’ He never had any doubts about me making the film. He knew that he was in not good condition, and he said bravely ‘I’m not embarrassed. I have to show my problems.’ And he told Paulina, ‘I need to show what I’m living. This is my new battle of communication.’”

MTV Documentary Films acquired worldwide rights to The Eternal Memory at Sundance and plans a theatrical release of the film in the U.S. this summer. The documentary shows the vital role Góngora played in preserving the light of humanistic values in the midst of Chile’s darkest days. During the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Góngora edited an opposition newspaper, and he later became part of a television news group that clandestinely reported on the Pinochet regime’s crimes, which included “disappearing” thousands of perceived opponents. After the transition to democracy in 1990, Góngora helped restore his nation’s cultural vitality that had been suppressed by the authoritarian government.

“To Chile after the dictatorship, he meant hope, like he was someone that very fast was concerned to try to bring back the cultural life that was completely turned off during the dictatorship,” Alberdi observed. During the years of military rule, “People didn’t have access to books, didn’t have access to cinema. It was a generation that was completely censored in the cultural aspect. And he was concerned to bring that back.”

The director said Urrutia is trying to adjust to the reality of being without her partner of more than two decades.

“Her routine and her life were completely focused on him,” she said. “She is trying to understand the new routines and how her new life is going to be.”

Góngora was among the authors of Chile: La Memoria Prohibida (Chile: The Forbidden Memory), a three-volume work published in 1989 that examined in chilling detail the human rights abuses committed by the Pinochet government. A reviewer at the time called the book “an invaluable service to the restoration of the truth.” 

That book, along with Góngora’s other contributions to journalism and democracy in Chile, serves as his legacy. So, too, does The Eternal Memory.

“His family is proud, and Paulina is proud and we know that he would be so proud of the film,” Alberdi said, “because the film communicates all these stages [of his life], not only the last one, so you understand the person in fragility and in power, in all of his dimensions.”