Florence Pugh Pays Tribute to ‘The Wonder’ Director Sebastián Lelio: ‘My Heart Is Broken’

Florence Pugh is mourning the death of director and collaborator Sebastián Lelio.Lelio died last week after suffering from “health complications,” according to his partner Amalia Kassai. The late writer-director worked with Pugh on the 2022 film “The Wonder.” The actress took to social media Monday to post her remembrance to Lelio. “My heart is broken,” Pugh wrote. “He was a man who was so firmly on our side. He cared so deeply for women, he dedicated his work to telling the stories of women and all of the different hardships and pain. He was sensitive, with bright blue beaming eyes that stared into your soul even if you were talking about breakfast. We fell in love over food, we had so much to talk about with the script of The Wonder, but the thing that really allowed us to share a heartbeat was love of food. Meat, stews, cheese, red wine. OH RED WINE we both would scream.” She continued: “He would take me out for foodie dinners in Dublin to talk about the project but we’d just be giddy over the chefs choices sent out. So it’s not lost on me that right before I’d found out about his passing, I’d purchased a special cut of beef and a special red wine, almost as a preparation for his mourning. I cooked it. Drank it. And thought and spoke of how unique and mesmerising he was. I smiled through tears as I looked at my plate because I knew he would have smiled at it too.” Alongside “The Wonder,” Lelio was most-known for 2017’s “A Fantastic Woman” which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Chilean news reports wrote last week that the director was found dead in his home. He was 52. “With great sadness, we announce the death, following health complications, of Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio,” Kassai wrote in translation. “We are going through a time of profound grief, and his memory will remain with us forever. He was a wonderful person who made significant contributions to Chilean culture at important moments in its history. As a family, we ask for privacy and consideration during these difficult times.” Pugh finished her post marveling at Lelio’s brilliance and his urgent insistence to be dancing as much as possible. “He taught me the need and importance of dancing. Regularly. Ugly but human dancing,” Pugh finished. “He was patient. He was gentle. He was a brilliant artist and a director whose actions in his art made a difference. This loss has really hurt my heart, and a big painful reminder that we don’t have forever.” Lelio had been working on an adaptation of the Alejandro Zambra novel “The Chilean Poet” and was set for “Voyagers” which boasts a cast of Andrew Garfield as Carl Sagan and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Ann Druyan.