Arturo Ripstein Filmography

Born:: December 13, 1943 in Mexico City, Mexico
Occupation:: Director, Screenwriter
Biography:: Widely considered Mexico's most celebrated and respected contemporary filmmaker, as well as perhaps the only director to have truly inherited Luis Buñuel's mantle, Arturo Ripstein is a legend in his own right. His films have earned both fame and infamy for taking melodrama to its macabre extremes...Read More

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La Virgen de la lujuria

Crew: Director

Actors: Luis Felipe Tovar, Ariadna Gil, Patricia Reyes Spindola, Juan Diego, Julian Pastor

Synopsis: Legendary Mexican director Arturo Ripstein explores the mundane and sexual obsession in 1940s Mexico in his 2002 film The Virgin of Lust. Introverted Ignacio "Nacho" Jurado (Luis Felipe Tovar) spends his days waiting tables at the Cafe Ofelia and his nights amongst his voluminous porno collection. Read More

2002
La Perdición de los hombres

Crew: Director

Actors: Patricia Reyes Spindola, Rafael Inclán, Luis Felipe Tovar, Carlos Chavez, Leticia Valenzuela

Synopsis: Arturo Ripstein's black comedy takes its title from a Mexican song about women as the downfall of men. Partitioned into four long scenes, the first sees a badly executed murder in which two killers ambush their victim, stone him to death, and use his wheelbarrow to tow away the body. The film then Read More

2000
Así es la vida

Crew: Director

Actors: Arcelia Ramirez, Luis Felipe Tovar, Patricia Reyes Spindola, Ernesto Yanez

Synopsis: Using digital video and a skeleton crew, master filmmaker Arturo Ripstein boldly reworks the ancient Greek drama Medea, employing a dizzying array of flashbacks and Brechtian devices. The film focuses on Julia (Arcelia Ramirez) who works as an homeopathic doctor. Lovelorn and embittered, she Read More

2000
El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba

Crew: Director

Actors: Fernando Luján, Marisa Paredes, Salma Hayek, Rafael Inclán, Ernesto Yanez

Synopsis: Based on the novel of Gabriel Garcia Marquez by the same name, but set in the forties, the film is a reflection on life and its illusions by the Mexican master Arturo Ripstein. In a small coastal town in Mexico in the late 1940's, an obstinate colonel of the anticlerical Cristeros War keeps Read More

1999
El Evangelio De Las Maravillas

Crew: Director

Actors: Francisco Rabal, Katy Jurado, Carolina Papaleo, Edwarda Gurrola, Bruno Bichir

Synopsis: Mexican director Arturo Ripstein helmed this Mexican-Argentine-Spanish religious drama with Buñuelian overtones. Based on true events that took place in Mexico during the '70s, the film is updated to the present. Mama Dorita (Katy Jurado) leads the New Jerusalem cult with film-buff Papa Basilio (Francisco Rabal Read More

1998
Deep Crimson

Crew: Director

Actors: Regina Orozco, Daniel Jiménez Cacho, Marisa Paredes, Veronica Merchant

Synopsis: Noted Mexican filmmaker Arturo Ripstein directed this darkly comic drama of love and murder. Coral Fabre (Regina Orozco) is an overweight, emotionally unstable nurse raising two children on her own. Coral is desperately lonely, and through a "Lonely Hearts" club, she begins corresponding with Read More

1/29/97
La Reina da la Noche

Crew: Director

Actors: Patricia Reyes Spindola, Alberto Estrella, Blanca Guerra, Ana Ofelia Murguia, Alex Cox

Synopsis: The legendary life of Mexican singer Lucha Reyes is the basis of this fictionalized biography ( or as director Arturo Ripstein puts it "an imaginary biography"). Lucha Reyes was an unconventional, and sexually liberated woman, most famous for her "cancion ranchera" style singing. Her story begins Read More

1994
Principio y Fin

Crew: Director

Actors: Ernesto Laguardia, Julieta Egurrola, Lucia Munoz, Alberto Estrella

Synopsis: This Mexican film, loosely based on Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz's 1940's book, traces the slow and painful collapse of a Mexican family after the sudden death of the father. Much of the film focuses upon the outcomes of two disparate brothers. Following his death, the formerly middle-class Read More

1994
La Mujer del Puerto

Crew: Director

Actors: Patricia Reyes Spindola, Alejandro Parodi, Evangelina Sosa, Damián Alcázar, Ernesto Yanez

Synopsis: Even with careful handling, this sordid story based on a tale by the famed French writer Guy de Maupassant might repel would-be viewers, but add in scatology and high-blown philosophical maunderings by the lead characters, and you have a recipe for a cinematic disaster. In the story, a sailor has Read More

1991
Mentiras Piadosas

Crew: Director

Actors: Delia Casanova, Alonso Echanove, Ernesto Yanes

Synopsis: Alonso Echanove tops the cast of Mentiras Piadosas as a Mexican grocer and family man. The poor grocer has grown weary of his responsibilities, both on the job and at home. His life is turned around when he meets a pretty health inspector (Delio Casanova). As luck would have, the woman is likewise Read More

1989
Imperio De La Fortuna

Crew: Director

Actors: Ernesto Gómez Cruz, Blanca Guerra, Alejandro Parodi, Zaide Silvia Gutierrez, Margarita Sanz

Synopsis: Dull-witted Mexican peasant Ernesto Gomez Cruz comes into possession of a rooster severely injured in a cockfight. He restores the bird's health and wins several bouts, then runs afoul of gambler Alejandro Parodi, who has the rooster's ribs cracked so it can never win again. Taking Cruz under his Read More

1986
El Otro

Crew: Director

Actors: Rafael Sanchez Navarro, Juan Ignacio Aranda, Ignacio Tarso, Patricia Rivera

Synopsis: In one of the more intentionally and unintentionally confusing films to come out of the directorial career of auteur Arturo Ripstein, El Otro is something else, so to speak. The film is set in the late 1940s or early '50s and told as one partially surreal story within another, and clues to Read More

1985
Rastro de Muerte

Crew: Director

1981
Cardena Perpetua

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Pedro Armendariz, Jr., Narciso Busquets, Ernesto Gómez Cruz, Ana Martin, Angélica Chaín

1980
La Seducción

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Katy Jurado, Gonzalo Vega, Viridiana Alatriste, Noe Murayama

Synopsis: A scheming rebel marauder uses his lover's lovely daughter as bait to entice unsuspecting soldiers into a death trap. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

1980
La Tia Alejandra

Crew: Director

Synopsis: A middle-class family makes room for an elderly houseguest, only to discover her presence opens the door for evil in this atmospheric tale of terror. Aunt Alejandra (Isabela Corona) is an elderly woman who relocates to Mexico City and informs her nephew that she's moving in with him. The nephew Read More

1979
Cadena Perpetua

Crew: Director

Synopsis: An ex-con struggling to break away from his criminal past is dragged back into a life of crime by a crooked policeman in this 1979 crime drama that won Ariel Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide Read More

1978
The Place Without Limits

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Lucha Villa, Ana Martin, Gonzalo Vega, Julian Pastor, Carmen Salinas

Synopsis: In a Mexican village, the local whorehouse is run by an elderly transvestite man and his daughter. One of the house's regular customers is a truck driver with a violent turn of mind. One day, he loses control entirely. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide Read More

1977
La Viuda Negra

Crew: Director

1977
Foxtrot

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Peter O'Toole, Charlotte Rampling, Max von Sydow, Jorge Luke, Helena Rojo

Synopsis: Arturo Ripstein directs Foxtrot, a drama filmed in Mexico that borrows much material from The Rules of the Game. Wealthy European aristocrat Liviu (Peter O'Toole) and his wife, Julia (Charlotte Rampling) escape the harsh reality of WWII by vacationing on a tropical island. Due to unforeseen Read More

1976
Lecumberri

Crew: Director

1976
El Castillo De La Pureza

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this disturbing drama, a father, seeking to protect his family from the evils of the outside world, locks them away in his ancestral home for eighteen years. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1974
El Santo Oficio

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: The long arm of the Inquisition, or the "Holy Office," reached at least as far as 16th-century Mexico (known as New Spain at the time). Many Spanish Catholics of Moorish or Jewish origin found it expedient to flee to the New World to escape the suffocating attentions of the Inquisition. In Spain Read More

1974
La Hora de Los Niños

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Carlos Savage

Synopsis: This offbeat tale finds parents searching for a baby-sitter for their young son. They manage to locate a sitter who is a clown in maniacal makeup. After tickling the boy in a suggestive manner, the parents leave and the clown tells the story of Snow White then goes off to read. But after the young Read More

1969
Tiempo De Morir

Crew: Director

Actors: Jorge Martinez de Hoyos, Marga Lopez, Enrique Rocha, Alfredo Leal

Synopsis: A man comes home after serving 18 years in jail for murder in this routine western. Although the man killed in self defense, rumors in town circulated that he murdered the victim in cold blood. The ex-con wants to get his life together, but the two sons of the slain man are gunning for the man who Read More

1965