Laura Maria Isabel Ruiz Ocadiz: A Trailblazing Filmmaker Breaking Cinematic Conventions

Emerging from the Mexican independent film industry, Ruiz Ocadiz is a name that resonates particularly in Europe and Asia. A versatile artist whose career spans acting, writing, and directing, her expressionistic style merges thought-provoking visuals and poetic prose into an unforgiving narrative.

Early Life and Artistic Foundations

Born in 1983, in Mexico City, Ruiz Ocadiz was raised in an eclectic environment of musicians, mathematicians, and physiologists. Influenced by her uncle, Ricardo Ocadiz, a concert pianist and one of Mexico’s jazz predecessors, she grew up amid the complexity of jazz and classical performances at venues like Bellas Artes, developing a keen appreciation for rhythm that would later translate into film montage. Her father, Enrique Guillermo Ruiz de la Torre, played a pivotal role in her education, instilling in her a love for scientific thinking and academic endeavor.

Television and Theater

Pursuing a science degree, she became drawn to the performing arts. Advised by an industry mentor, she landed featured extra roles in several Mexican soap operas, including CLAP (2003) and Reb3lde (2004). Trained in musical theater at the Artestudio Academy, she performed in productions such as Newsies (2004) and Peter Pan (2005), where, despite showing acting prowess, she was enthralled by the magic happening behind the scenes and joined the stagehand team, much to her drama teacher’s dismay.

Majoring in clinical psychology, her thesis on the incidence of eating disorders in ballet dancers was praised as the best research work of 2007 by her university. This would later influence her crafting of deeply human and emotionally resonant fiction.

Writing and Filmmaking

Becoming a film critic for the magazine F.I.L.M.E. motivated her screenwriting endeavors. Enrolling in the prestigious Sogem (General Society of Writers of Mexico) school, she was granted a “Melodrama Writer” scholarship by Telemundo. Determined to refine her directorial skills after shooting her first short film, both lauded and censored for its bold imagery, she pursued a master’s in cinematography at Altrafílmica (2015-2017) and met Juan Pablo Cortés (Love Hurts, 2002), an esteemed film editor of whom she became an apprentice. After obtaining her first job in the industry as Production Assistant of the feature film Sátiros (Roberto Mares, 2017), she married actor and producer Roberto Arenas Farquet (Paul Ragsdale’s Murdercise, 2023) and authored the novels Amnesty (2018) and Steve’s Canotier (2021), exercising a “cinematic” prose that earned her a reputation among readers as “creator of a new genre.”

The combined experience would lead her to write and direct the 2021 shorts Neither You Nor I, Misplace the Rabbits, and We Are A Motive; and the silent, experimental short Love Without a Casket (2022). Her work attained over 60 laurels, including 38 awards and nominations, including Best Short Film in Rome and South Africa, Best Director in New York City and India, and Best Human/Women’s Rights Film in Munich and Iran; also becoming a nominee in Cannes and Tokyo and a finalist in London and Nigeria.

A Visionary Redefining the Crafts of Storytelling

Introducing new symbols through her art direction and conceptual art, Ruiz Ocadiz promises to achieve a unique sexual atmosphere in her debut oneiric feature A Wakefulness of Indocility—based on her homonymous 2021 novel—which will premiere in 2025, consisting of 2 volumes. Treading the darkest realms of the psychosocial being, this fearless director employs various unconventional cameras to modify reality, leading us to a non-existent past and the eternal fear of a cruel and uncertain future. Her colorful blend of flesh-and-bone, puppet, and cartoon characters creates a contrast between freshness and disturbance, allowing us to savor her directing of arduous performances facing the intangible, the surreptitious, the unconscious of the world they’ve been plunged into.

On how to direct, Ruiz Ocadiz mentions, “…a large part of my so-called “self” changed, finding myself trapped in a tumult of acting images that raced quickly through my reasoning, but I wanted to feel it THAT real, and when I least expected it, I found a “rhetorical number” that led me to use analytical geometry in my filming.”

Maria Ruiz Ocadiz demonstrates that movies can be felt from the gut, creating an atmosphere of estrangement in her characters, expressing humanity’s erratic passing through this world, driven by a dichotomy of the soul.

“Amidst the woods of pink ash, flakes suspended in the wake of my new past, the pain finally subdued. I’d rescued my big fish from the frozen depths. I’d a film to make. Thank you, David Lynch, for that treasure map“.
-Laura Maria Isabel Ruiz Ocadiz

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FilmmakerLife Magazine Vol. 97 Maria Isabel Ruiz Ocadiz