Romulo Berrutithe journalist and film critic who shone with the television series “Private Function”died this Sunday at 88 years.
“With deep regret we say goodbye to Rómulo Berruti, a prominent journalist specialized in culture and entertainment, whose career left an indelible mark on the dissemination of theater, cinema and artistic activity in our country“, the Argentine Association of Actors (AAA) posted this morning when announcing his death.
His passion for art began at a very young age, when his uncle Alejandro took him to the main Buenos Aires theaters and thus, between magazines and Shakespearean tragedies, he became a critic, as he himself recalled in an interview he did with Clarín in August 2024.
“My childhood was bipolar,” he said that time. “Bipolar because I had a life with my uncle, I was a night guy at 12, still in shorts. And during the day, he went to the Marist Brothers’ priests’ school.
With the exception of his first job, as a librarian at Argentores, journalism was always his thing.
Since 1960, when he was just over 20 years old, Berruti developed extensive work in print, radio and television media. He was part of the editorial staff of El Mundo, Crítica and, For more than two decades he served as head of Clarín Shows.
“I lived in a time when to write in a diary you had to know how to write. I have an extraordinary relationship with the language. Regarding the ‘sins’ of the show, erotic pranks have been done since time immemorial. In an office people also fall in love, but much more so in a job where fiction forces you to make physical contact. We are not plastic. Things happened on filming, but everything was more kept secret,” he said in 2024 in the talk with Clarion.
He joined the newspaper in the mid-1960s, when he was about to get married, but gave up, left his girlfriend and became a “professional bachelor.” Discreet with his personal life, he avoided giving details of his romances. “I’m only going to give names of those that were legal stories. I lived for 5 years with Constanza Maral and I was dating María Fiorentino. Touch and go is not counted“, he said.
For the general public, Berruti remained in memory as one of the two presenters of the film series “Private Function”which he drove with Carlos Morelli. It spent almost two decades uninterruptedly on the air, first on Channel 7 and then on cable.
How was the cycle born? “We worked at Clarín with Morelli. We had met at a Mar del Plata Festival, in 1960 or 1961. He was collaborating at La Nación and I approached him with a boss at Clarín. Carlos was a film critic, I was essentially doing theater, but since there were not enough employees, I started making films as well. Thus, Ramón Andino, also at Clarín at that time, told me: ‘Rómulo, I am on Channel 7. The programming is a disaster, everything is a military parade. Don’t you both want to do a film program?‘”.
Before Función Privada they did alternative cycles such as Microcine 7 and Sábado Segunda noche. “The channel didn’t have movies. We had plenty of talk, but the film library that was on celluloid was horrible. Technically it was a disaster on that old channel 7 on Alem Street. And when democracy arrived, Morelli and I began to work on the news with entertainment columns. And then they call us for a private function. First we start with emblematic old films, “A Whole Man”, “The Gaucho War”. Later, as the channel bought material, we grew. What we did on the old Channel 7 with broken movies became something else on the new ATC,” he recalled.
Berruti assured that nothing that happened on the air was scripted: Neither he nor Morelli knew what the other was going to say.. Over time, they added first the remembered moment in which they shared a whiskey – drinking alcohol in the open, something very unusual for the time – and then directly a meal.
“On the street people say: ‘Thank you for the cinema you gave us. ‘I started to like cinema because of you’“, said Berruti. His task also included participation in juries of fundamental awards for artistic activity, as well as constant support for national production.
It is with deep regret that we say goodbye to Rómulo Berruti, a prominent journalist specialized in culture and entertainment, whose career left an indelible mark on the dissemination of theater, cinema and artistic activity in our country. https://t.co/LKlDnR0OEf pic.twitter.com/ANPaLHl50e
— Argentine Association of Actors (@actorespresa) March 23, 2026
“His analytical vision and commitment to culture helped make visible the work of artists, creators and workers in the sector throughout the country,” the AAA fired him this Monday.
