Mexican director Arturo Ripstein awarded in Venice for 50-year career

Renowned Mexican director Arturo Ripstein, 71, has received a special award at the on-going 72nd Venice International Film Festival for his 50-year career.

A ceremony was held Thursday evening before the premiere screening of La calle de la Amargura (Bleak Street), the latest film of Ripstein, with industry professionals, journalists and fans attending.

The film, which tells of the bizarre murders of two masked midget-wrestlers, was widely praised at major festivals like Toronto and Venice for its surrealist narrative and gorgeous black-and-white cinematography.

The director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera said Ripstein is "the most vital, tenacious and original director" of the generation that made its debut in the mid-60s.

"The strange blend of beauty and brutality, compassion and violence, irony and sadness, adds a wholly personal dimension to his cinema," Barbera underlined. "These elements are also to be found, their power and beauty intact, in his latest film."

Born in Mexico city, Ripstein made his debut as a film director in 1965 with Time to Die (Tiempo de Morir). His signature Latin-American crime films won him a world-wide reputation in the past 50 years. Endit