Director’s La calle de la amargura to be presented Out of Competition.
Mexican director Arturo Ripstein is to be honoured at the 72nd Venice Film Festival (Sept 2-12) with a Biennale award to celebrate his 50-year career.
The ceremony will take place before the world premiere of his latest film, La calle de la amargura, which will be presented Out of Competition on Sept 10 in the Sala Grande.
The film is based on the murder of two wrestlers who were found dead at a hotel in Mexico City. Written by Ripstein’s wife Paz Alicia Garciadiego, it stars Mexican actress Patricia Reyes Spindola.
Ripstein’s 1996 Deep Crimson competed for the Venice Golden Lion, while The Virgin Of Lust played in 2002, picking up a special mention.
Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera described Ripstein as “the most vital, tenacious and original director of the generation that made its debut in the mid-Sixties, the heir of the golden age of Mexican studio films and the forerunner of the new generation of contemporary authors such as Carlos Reygadas, Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Pereda, each of whom in their own way, recognizes the profound debt that they owe to his work.”
Barbera added: “In his unforgettable films, most of them co-written with Paz Alicia Garciadiego, Ripstein has brought to life a restless and afflicted universe, populated with characters pathetically on the verge of the abyss into which they are destined to fall.
“The strange blend of beauty and brutality, compassion and violence, irony and sadness, adds a wholly personal dimension to his cinema, which delves its roots into popular tragedy and the atmospheres of melodrama, which he cleverly re-elaborates.
“These elements are also to be found, their power and beauty intact, in his latest film, which the Venice Film Festival has the pleasure of presenting in its world premiere screening”.
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