Born in Mexico on December 13, 1943. In 1962 he visited the set of El ángel exterminador and Luis Buñuel, with whom he maintained a close friendship until the former’s death. In 1965, at the age of 21, he directed his first film, Tiempo de morir, based on a script by Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes. From then on his career became one of the most significant and important in Mexican and international cinema of the last few decades, thanks to which he has garnered several prizes both in Mexico and abroad. His international prizes include the Jury Award at San Sebastian 1978 for El lugar sin límites and the Golden Shell (ex-aequo) at San Sebastian 1993 for Principio y fin.

In 2000 Arturo Ripstein changed the direction of his career to become the first director in Latin America to shoot a film in digital format, Así es la vida… (Such is Life). Innovative and daring, Ripstein has treated us to two more digital films, La perdición de los hombres (The Ruination of Men), for which he won the Golden Shell at San Sebastian 2000 and La virgen de la lujuria (The Virgin of Lust). Retrospectives of his work have been organized in Munich, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Boston, La Rochelle and Dallas, the Chicago Art Institute, Turin, Hong Kong and Thessalonika.