Mexican filmmaker Felipe Cazals died yesterday, Saturday, October 16 at age 84 of undisclosed causes. A veteran filmmaker, he directed over thirty feature films, and was one of the country’s most revered filmmakers with his combative style and his politically and socially conscious cinema.
Cazals was born in Guéthary, France on July 28, 1937, and his family migrated to Mexico in 1949. He studied at the L'Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris, and starts his film career upon his return to Mexico in 1965 with the documentary short Que se callen… That same year, he also directed four other short films: La otra guerra, Leonora Carrington o el sortilegio irónico, Mariana Alcoforado, and Alfonso Reyes.
In 1968 he directed his debut feature La manzana de la discordia / The Apple of Discord, starring Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Yolanda Alatorre, Mario Casillas, Yolanda Ciani, and Max Kerlow. The film, set in a poor Mexican town, tells the story of a man who talks two of his friends into robbing and killing a landowner. Cazals followed with the existential comedy Familiaridades in 1969, and a year later he directed the biopic Zapata, on the historic figure of the Mexican revolution, produced by and starring popular singer Antonio Aguilar. The director would later disavow this film project.
Other films that he directed in the beginning of the seventies were the period piece The Garden of Aunt Isabel /El jardín de la tía Isabel (1971), Aquellos años (1973), and the documentary film Los que viven donde el viento sopla suave (1974).
In 1976 Cazals directed his seminal film Canoa: A Shameful Memory / Canoa, one of Mexico’s most highly regarded works of political cinema. The film reimagines a real-life incident that had occurred just eight years before its release, when a group of urban university employees on a hiking trip were viciously attacked by residents of the village of San Miguel Canoa who had been manipulated by a corrupt priest into believing the travelers were communist revolutionaries. The film received the Silver Bear, Special Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, and more recently was rereleased by The Criterion Collection in 2017.
Other titles directed by Cazals include The Heist / El apando (1976); Las Poquianchis (1977); The Year of the Plague / El año de la peste (1979), with a screenplay by Gabriel García Márquez; Bajo la metralla (1982); Luz's Reasons / Los motivos de Luz (1985), winner of the Silver Seashell at the San Sebastian Film Festival; El tres de copas (1986); and Digna... hasta el último aliento (2004).
His last films were the historic dramas Las vueltas del citrillo (2005), winner of the Special Jury Award at Amiens Film Festival and the Grand Coral - Second Prize and Best Director Award at the Havana Film Festival; Chicogrande (2010); and Citizen Buelna / Ciudadano Buelna (2013). In 2006 the Austin Film Society presented the retrospective series “Felipe Cazals: The Conscience of Mexico,” and in 2010 he was awarded the Golden Ariel for lifetime achievement.
