Arturo Ripstein
Arturo Ripstein (born 1943) is a Mexican filmmaker often described as the godfather of independent Mexican cinema, celebrated for slow, somber, claustrophobic melodramas about existential loneliness. Born in Mexico City to producer Alfredo Ripstein and Frida Rosen, he was mentored from his teens by Luis Buñuel — who allowed him on set during the shooting of The Exterminating Angel — and made his directorial debut at twenty-one with A Time to Die (1965) from a Gabriel García Márquez screenplay. He has built a substantial body of work in close collaboration with screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego, his wife, including The Castle of Purity (1972), The Place Without Limits, Deep Crimson (1996, a treatment of the Lonely Hearts Killers), and No One Writes to the Colonel. A nine-time Ariel Award winner, he received Mexico's National Prize for Arts and Sciences in 1997, the second filmmaker so honoured after Buñuel.