This article appeared in the October 24, 2025 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here.

The Realm of Fortune (Arturo Ripstein, 1986)

For six decades and counting, Arturo Ripstein has challenged the traditions of Mexican culture with exacting cinematic critiques of its religious, provincial, and patriarchal norms. Ripstein directed his first film in 1966 at the age of 21—the existential western Time to Die, co-written by celebrated Latin American authors Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez. These were salad days for the future literary stars, and while the film was made on the cheap for a far-flung German market with a particular hankering for Mexican westerns, Ripstein’s choice of collaborators provides early evidence of his almost unparalleled talent for locating great authors and source material to work with. His career has seen him adapt novels by Naguib Mahfouz (The Beginning and the End, 1993) and Juan Rulfo (The Realm of Fortune, 1986), among other major writers. Time to Die also displays Ripstein’s unique ability to situate familiar cinematic tropes within specific, real-life cultural milieus; the film became a western due to the demands of the market, yet its genre elements draw out its depiction of the rituals of machismo in Mexico.

This attention to literary detail and thematic scope is prevalent throughout all his films, especially in the numerous adaptations of true-crime incidents he’s ripped straight from newspaper headlines. Though Ripstein’s films have often shocked audiences, his proclivity for choosing macabre subjects is not rooted in nihilism. Rather, a strange brand of humanism reveals itself in his work, whether in films like The Castle of Purity (1972), his early portrait of a man who forces his family into isolation to keep what he considers the “evil” of the outside world at bay, or in his more recent Bleak Street (2015), about two sex workers whose attempt to rob a pair of diminutive luchadors ends in disaster. Much of his sensitivity as a filmmaker, particularly when working with such potentially sordid source material, is also a product of his wife and collaborator Paz Alicia Garciadiego’s rich and methodical screenplays; they’ve worked together since The Realm of Fortune.

On the occasion of a welcome New York City retrospective at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which kicks off today and runs through October 30, I spoke to Ripstein, now 81, about his long career. His anecdotes, like his films, bare it all.

I understand your father was a film producer and he’d take you to the studio as a kid.

I am the son of a film producer [named Alfredo Ripstein]—he passed away several years ago. Sometimes he’d take me to the studio and I’d see how films were made. My first memories were from those trips. I was absolutely fascinated with that world. When I was little, if anyone asked me what an airplane was like, I’d answer, “An airplane is a long tube with wings, and inside you’ll find spotlights, cables, cameras, and director chairs.” If you asked me about a boat, I’d say the same thing. Being around a camera, a couple of spotlights, and strewn-about cables was an obsession for me.

You have frequently been associated with Luis Buñuel. Did you first meet him during these early studio visits?

Buñuel was very good friends with my dad because they both really liked guns. They had pistols, shotguns, rifles—they’d go to the shooting range. I met him when I was a little boy. He was just a man with a deep voice. When I was 15, my parents took me to see his film Nazarín (1959). It was an epiphany for me. It was a shock. I realized that there was another cinema and another way to make movies.

I went to Buñuel’s house and rang the doorbell. He opened the door and asked me who I was. Back then, being the son of a producer meant you were certifiably stupid. All of my peers, sons of producers, were slackers and idiots who only wanted to make money. I told Buñuel I wanted to be a film director and he shut the door in my face. But, a few minutes later, he agreed to let me step inside—I imagine because of his friendship with my father.

He had a small projector in his dining room, where he was watching a film. He told me to sit down and started winding a short film. It was Un chien Andalou (1929). I watched Un chien Andalou at 15 and ended up in a state of fright. When the film ended, Buñuel asked, “Do you want to be a director?” I said, “Yes, I want to be a director, just like that.” So he played the film again! That’s when my wild admiration for Buñuel began.

How did your relationship evolve from there?

When I was 18, Buñuel started to film The Exterminating Angel (1962), and I asked him if I could attend the shoot. He agreed, but did not let me go every day. I’d stand in the corner, very discreetly, and occasionally ask Buñuel questions. He’d answer, sometimes irate and sometimes generous. Eventually, I was promoted to carrying Buñuel’s briefcase. I’d hand him things based on his demands. Hand me a banana. Hand me the viewfinder. Hand me the script. I got close to him. He’d call me up and say, “Come and get me, we’re going to the movies.” We’d go, he’d buy snacks, and when I’d ask him to give me some, he wouldn’t.

Years later, Max Aub, a celebrated French-born Mexican author, wrote a book—he wrote about Buñuel—and, having seen me on the set of The Exterminating Angel, decided I must have been his assistant. It was terrible because each film I made was compared to a film by Buñuel. It was an absolute injustice. Buñuel was a genius and I was a minor craftsman.

What was the film scene in Mexico City like in the ’50s and ’60s? Were there a lot of film clubs?

No, there were only a few. There was a film club at L’Alliance française and several film clubs at universities. Since I did not attend film school, I learned about cinema by reading and going to film clubs. Film history was inaccessible. You were at the mercy of what was programmed, what was said, and what was read. I was lucky in that I was able to attend studio lots and physically see how movies were made. But I am more or less an autodidact.

My father made me go to college. I studied law and then art history because I couldn’t join the union, and you couldn’t make films unless you were in the union. You had to be above the age limit, which was 21 at the time. Once I turned 21, I joined the union and managed to make a film. It was very complicated.

My dad said, “Here’s a list of writers who work for me; choose one.” I told him I already had one, a friend of mine I’d met some time ago. It was García Márquez. He’d published a couple of novels in Mexico, and I wanted to work with him. He had a script and I had another. We built upon these and made the script that ended up being my first film, Time to Die.

What was the experience of making that film at such a young age?

It was enjoyable, fascinating, and incredibly difficult. My dad was a very demanding producer, and he wanted the film to be a western. The script wasn’t a western, but that was the only kind of cinema he could sell abroad. For some reason, they bought Mexican westerns in Germany. I imagine it was done to satiate a bunch of crazy Germans who had fun with that sort of thing. Anyhow, we transformed the script into a cowboy picture.

A few years later, you formed a group with Felipe Cazals, Pedro Miret, Rafael Castanedo, Alexis Grivas, and Tomás Pérez Turrent called “Cine Independiente de México.” What were your ambitions?

We wanted to make our own movies. It was extremely hard to get funding back then. Rafael Castanedo, who edited several of my films, and Felipe Cazals, who was a director, and four more of us invented “Cine Independiente.” Around that same time, there was an artist exhibition [Salón Independiente, 1968]. It was a moment of rupture in Mexican art, which was more or less beholden to the legacy of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, who said, “It’s our way or the highway.” The younger painters responded with their own set of new paintings. Cazals and I decided to make a short film [Salón independiente (1969)] about the exhibition, and asked all of the painters involved to gift us one artwork each so that we could sell them and make our own movies. We sold the paintings and made $5,000 each. With that, I made my film The Children’s Hour (1969) and Cazals made his [Familiarities (1969)]. We wanted to overthrow everyone and propagate our own voice. Those two films were really weird, but very fun to make. They were small films and remain little-seen. But they marked our first attempt at flagellating our ancestors.

Many of your films are based on crime stories. What is it about these news stories that you find so fascinating?

The fascinating thing about news reports, especially crime stories, is that they are very well assembled. They have a beginning, middle, and end. They’re very well-constructed, and I’ve always liked having a bit of geometry in my films. My films tend to be circular. I’ve always found structure to be important in art.

But your interest seems to go beyond structure; there is also a clear thematic interest in crime and squalor.

I have always found darkness and horror absolutely fascinating. I would never invite any of my characters to dinner at my house. Not even as a joke! In fact, I wouldn’t even shake their hands out of sheer panic and cowardice. But I’m fascinated with the environment they live in. This is a country of survivors, and talking about survivors is fundamental.

Your film The Place Without Limits (1978), which you made a few years after works like Castle of Purity and The Holy Inquisition (1974), was one of the first films in Mexico to deal with homosexuality. I imagine it must have proven quite the shock for audiences at the time.

There were several scandals. At that time, those themes were not in films. The Place Without Limits got going thanks to my friend Carlos Fuentes. He had a nice house in the south of Mexico City with a little guest house. I’d visit him and José Donoso, who lived in the guest house, rather frequently. Donoso had just finished writing a novel, Hell Has No Limits. He asked me to read it, and I found it absolutely fascinating.

When the film screened in the San Sebastián Film Festival—as soon as the kiss [between a man and a drag queen] was about to happen—the scandal was such that you could hear it outside. No one had seen anything like it. People started shouting and all hell broke loose. When it was released in Mexico, scandals broke out across theaters the closer you got to that kiss. There was commotion back then. Now, it’s a totally different thing. Gay cinema is totally different. But this was the first movie in Mexico that dealt with homosexuality in a serious way. There were plenty of mariquita characters in Mexican movies, but they were always seen as clownish—they’d make little gestures, fake voices, and carry themselves in an extremely mannered way. I was decidedly against that.

How did the fact that your films were often met with such scandalous reactions affect your career?

Producers never called me. It was very difficult to get work. I more or less made my career pitching my own projects. There were some projects that were offered to me, but they were very commercial. I had to make a movie called La ilegal (1979) because the director quit. I did it because I had to put bread and butter on the table. I remember once talking to Fritz Lang about American Guerrilla in the Philippines (1950), and he said: [attempting a German accent] “We directors also eat.”

When did you meet Paz Alicia Garciadiego, your wife and co-writer?

That was many years [after my initial encounters with García Márquez and Fuentes]. I was fascinated with her way of telling stories. We met at a party, and later at an educational center where I was supposed to direct a couple of short films. One day, I spoke to Juan Rulfo, another acquaintance, and asked him for the rights to The Golden Cockerel, which had been adapted for the screen many years back in 1964, by García Márquez. It was García Márquez’s first adaptation, written for Roberto Gavaldón. It was made at a turning point in Mexican cinema, toward the end of Mexico’s glorious Golden Age. It only told half the story.

I told Rulfo I wanted to film the entire story. He gave me the rights and I got a producer, who then asked me, “Who do you want to do the adaptation?” I said, “I’d like Paz.” And he said, “Oh, yes, Octavio is really good.” And I responded, “No, not Octavio, it’s another Paz.” I called her and she immediately refused the offer, so I told her she had until May 14 to write the script—a totally made-up date. Since she’d been educated by the nuns of the Sacred Heart and was very disciplined, she said, “Yes.” I taught her how to write a script, and from that point onward, everything she wrote fascinated me. We’d see each other quite frequently, until I said to her, “Look, instead of faxing one another, why don’t you come live with me?”

I want to ask about your most famous film, Deep Crimson (1996), which is based on the real-life crime story of the notorious Honeymoon Killers. Why adapt that quintessentially American story to Mexico?

At some point I read about the Honeymoon Killers, who were widely reported on in the United States in the ’40s. It was an enormous scandal. Then, Leonard Kastle directed the film The Honeymoon Killers (1970). I saw it when it came out. Years later I told Paz the story and mentioned there’d been a movie about it, but that it was long forgotten. Because no one remembered it, I figured we should try to make our version.

I tried to film it in the United States, in English. I showed it to several producers there, like four or five, and three of them said, “I will never speak to you ever again.” Finally, I decided to make my adaptation in Mexico. But, as you know, Mexico has many nuclear families that live close to one another and help each other out. We had to find a place where the houses were very far apart, so that the characters in the film could carry out their misdeeds in private. We settled on Sonora.

When we premiered the film in Venice, I remember Bertolucci came up to me and said, “That’s just like The Honeymoon Killers—my favorite film.” It turned out to be everyone’s favorite film. But ours is radically different.

In a sense, you’ve been remaking the same film over and over again—the same themes, the same arcs, the same kinds of characters. Is that how you feel about it?

I have always had the belief that a film director should only be allowed to make one or two movies over the course of their entire lives until it becomes polished like a stone. In the end, the movie would be perfect. Though I have been many people over the course of my life, I am no more than one person. I’m always making the same movie because I am no more than my eyes, my guts, my heart.

Translated from the original Spanish by the author. Special thanks to Mónica Lozano and Jesse Trussell for making this interview possible.

Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer is a Mexican-American film critic, editor, and film programmer based in Brooklyn. He is currently the managing director at Le Cinéma Club and managing editor at Screen Slate. His writing has appeared in Film Comment, Reverse Shot, and MUBI Notebook.