Raúl Ruiz
Filmography
Raúl Ruiz at IFFR

Utopia
Germany
IFFR 1977
L'hypothèse du tableau volé
Detective structured like an unfolding puzzle draws on art history for clues. It is also a playful parody on French art connoisseurs.
67'
France
IFFR 1979

La vocation suspendue
90'
France
IFFR 1979

La colonia penal
75'
Chile
IFFR 1982

Expression
IFFR 1982

Le jeu de l'oie
IFFR 1982

Nadie dijo nada
135'
Chile
IFFR 1982

Querelle de jardins
IFFR 1982

El realismo socialista
225'
France
IFFR 1982

The Territory
France
IFFR 1982
Tres tristes tigres
Early Ruiz film from the time when he still lived in Chile, based on a melodramatic play about a man who pimps for his sister, is largely a sketch of a social environment.
105'
Chile
IFFR 1982
L'hypothèse du tableau volé
Detective structured like an unfolding puzzle draws on art history for clues. It is also a playful parody on French art connoisseurs.
67'
France
IFFR 1984
La ville des pirates
Surrealist Ruiz film with echoes of Buñuel's L'Age d'Or. The pirate city is a ghost castle on a rocky island, in which a group of roaming souls is involved with gruesome sex and cannibalism.
111'
France
IFFR 1984

Regime sans pain
75'
France
IFFR 1986

L'éveille du Pont de l'Alma
85'
France
IFFR 1986
Mammame
A dance performance choreographed by Jean-Claude Gallotta forms the basis for an intoxicating dance film that, according to Ruiz, is 'about doubt, fully-fledged doubt'.
65'
France
IFFR 1987
Mémoire des apparences
A literature teacher has to learn off by heart the names of 15 thousand members of the resistance against the Chilean junta and to do so he uses a seventeenth century Spanish play. Ruiz adapted this and turned it into a playful experimental film in which dream and reality become entangled with each other.
100'
France
IFFR 1987

La chouette aveugle
80'
France
IFFR 1988

Le professeur taranne
52'
France
IFFR 1988

Tous les nuages sont des horloges
50'
France
IFFR 1989

The Golden Boat
83'
USA
IFFR 1991

Palomita Bianci
Chile
IFFR 1991

Terra nova
60'
IFFR 1991

Inferno
60'
France
IFFR 1992

Fado majeur et mineur
Raúl Ruiz is a master in evoking surreal dream worlds and does so with verve in this film too.
110'
France
IFFR 1995

Il Viaggio Clandestino
Religious travelogue by surrealist master Ruiz shot on Sicily.
60'
Italy
IFFR 1995

Elle
Alienating concoction of South-American surrealism and the 'classic' Hollywood thriller genre.
91'
France
IFFR 1996

Trois vies et une seule mort
Marcello Mastroianni played no less than four roles in his last feature, an accessible and enjoyable tale by Raul Ruiz.
123'
France
IFFR 1997

Le film à venir
Strange sect studies film fragment that is stolen.
8'
Switzerland
IFFR 1998

Généalogies d'un crime
Latest Ruiz was inspired by a bizarre anecdote from psychoanalysis. An incomparable courtroom drama with Cathérine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli.
113'
France
IFFR 1998

Shattered Image
Against the background of elegant apartments, chic restaurants and tropical surroundings Ruiz plays with cinematographic conventions, psychology and a large dose of 'suspension of disbelief' in his first American feature.
103'
USA
IFFR 1999
Le temps retrouvé
Film version of Marcel Proust's magnum opus. His reminiscences of decadent society life in nineteenth-century Paris mingle into the fictional reality of his literary work. An associative, fragmented and comic mosaic that does justice to the spirit of Proust.
158'
France
IFFR 2000
Combat d'amour en songe
Ruiz on inventive top form, including narrative games about making a feature about pirates; old religious opinions; retired nuns who run a brothel.
120'
France
IFFR 2002
Miotte vu par Ruiz
Raúl Ruiz spent three years following the life of the French painter Jean Miotte, well-known to connoisseurs, in his various studios. In the resulting documentary Ruiz' camera observes the work of the painter, but also takes part.
78'
France
IFFR 2002
Bérénice
Unusually lyrical Ruiz film about an impossible encounter, impossible harmony: a tragedy of closed doors. Based on the play by Racine.
105'
France
IFFR 2004
Ce jour-là
Black comedy about money, death and false spirituality that brings together an unlikely romantic couple: a spoilt society girl and a serial killer who has escaped from jail and has been hired to kill her.
105'
France
IFFR 2004
La chouette aveugle
In all respects an imaginative film by Ruiz. His adaptation of an Iranian novel and a Spanish play is a mixture of dream and reality, past and present. Unusual in its colour effects and the subtitling: often of what is not said.
105'
France
IFFR 2004
Colloque de chiens
Characters and plot of a melodrama are reduced to rudimentary attributes in combination with three sorts of material: shots of barking dogs, streets and other locations and a story told off-screen.
22'
France
IFFR 2004
Het dak van de walvis
Shot in Rotterdam, this stunning stream of visual, verbal and conceptual ideas looks at the difficult position of an anthropologist who tries to learn the language of an obscure Patagonian Indian tribe after finding its last remaining survivors.
90'
France
IFFR 2004
Des grands événements et des gens ordinaires: les élections
Ruiz takes the mickey out of the form of the television report, exaggerating the conventions and clichés, and then he lets the film run off the rails with surreal digressions.
65'
France
IFFR 2004
L'hypothèse du tableau volé
Detective structured like an unfolding puzzle draws on art history for clues. It is also a playful parody on French art connoisseurs.
67'
France
IFFR 2004

Lettre d'un cineaste
Ten years after the coup in Chile, Ruiz looks back at his past, with the eyes of someone who lives in exile. And via another world: that of cinema. A survivor returns to the land of the dead and comes across his doppelgangers and phantom friends.
12'
France
IFFR 2004
Mammame
A dance performance choreographed by Jean-Claude Gallotta forms the basis for an intoxicating dance film that, according to Ruiz, is 'about doubt, fully-fledged doubt'.
65'
France
IFFR 2004
Mémoire des apparences
A literature teacher has to learn off by heart the names of 15 thousand members of the resistance against the Chilean junta and to do so he uses a seventeenth century Spanish play. Ruiz adapted this and turned it into a playful experimental film in which dream and reality become entangled with each other.
100'
France
IFFR 2004
Une place parmi les vivants
Philosophical film-noir caricature, inspired by gangster films and detective stories from the 1950s. A translator of pulp fiction is asked to write a biography of a crook who alleges he is involved with several unsolved murders of young blonde models.
103'
France
IFFR 2004
La présence réelle
Actor Franck Oger is a spectator for the play in which he also performs in this ingenious film that Ruiz made during the Avignon Festival in 1983.
64'
France
IFFR 2004
Responso
In 1989, Raul Ruiz worked on a homage to Hubert Bals, who died a year earlier. He was played beautifully by Jean Badin. Hubert smokes and says he is busy and can't be disturbed. Never competed at the time and now the rediscovered film material can be seen. UNIQUE.
81'
Netherlands
IFFR 2004
Rhapsodie chilienne
Ruiz' introduction to the long work Cofralandes, about a fictional land that is a dreamed up version of his birthplace Chile. Seen through the eyes of three travellers, a Frenchman, a German and a Briton. With mystery, humour, intellectual reflections, science, nostalgia and poetry.
81'
Chile
IFFR 2004
Le temps retrouvé
Film version of Marcel Proust's magnum opus. His reminiscences of decadent society life in nineteenth-century Paris mingle into the fictional reality of his literary work. An associative, fragmented and comic mosaic that does justice to the spirit of Proust.
158'
France
IFFR 2004
Tres tristes tigres
Early Ruiz film from the time when he still lived in Chile, based on a melodramatic play about a man who pimps for his sister, is largely a sketch of a social environment.
105'
Chile
IFFR 2004
Les trois couronnes du matelot
Orson Welles meets Hans Christian Andersen, Edgar Allan Poe and others in Ruiz' first major commercial success in his new home of France.
117'
France
IFFR 2004
La vertige de la page blanche
Starting from the question of what happens if we have to pass judgement, Ruiz undertakes a breathtaking and amusing filmic adventure, larded with villainous humour.
81'
Belgium
IFFR 2004
La ville des pirates
Surrealist Ruiz film with echoes of Buñuel's L'Age d'Or. The pirate city is a ghost castle on a rocky island, in which a group of roaming souls is involved with gruesome sex and cannibalism.
111'
France
IFFR 2004

Wind Water
Ruis allows the West, China and the Arab world to start conversing with each other and they emerge in an insoluble dispute.
4'
United Kingdom
IFFR 2004
Dias de campo
New and against enchanting film by former Film Maker in Focus, Raúl Ruiz, who returned for this film to his homeland Chile. Two men in a bar talk about their lives as if they were dead. True or false?
89'
Chile
IFFR 2005
Responso
In 1989, Raul Ruiz worked on a homage to Hubert Bals, who died a year earlier. He was played beautifully by Jean Badin. Hubert smokes and says he is busy and can't be disturbed. Never competed at the time and now the rediscovered film material can be seen. UNIQUE.
81'
Netherlands
IFFR 2005
Klimt (director's cut)
A virtuoso homage to an artist and his life, the film is set against the rich historical tapestry of the fin de siècle. Screening of the director's version.
129'
Austria
IFFR 2006
Nucingen Haus
Raúl Ruiz' version of the age-old vampire theme. The new French owners take possession of their elegant Chilean mansion. The old servant is also taken over, but he behave strangely. An absurdist fairytale, freely based on Balzac.
94'
France
IFFR 2009
Secretos
Comedy written by Raúl Ruiz about several Chileans who cannot hide their all too human sides forever. When a certain El Traitor returns to Paris from Chile, it's high time to bring back memories of dangerous times when revolutionary ideas vied with amorous feelings.
89'
Chile
IFFR 2009
Mistérios de Lisboa
Breathtaking film version of the classic Portuguese novel by Camilo Carlos Branco. Lisbon in the 19th century: a boy discovers the secret of his aristocratic roots and a French heiress takes revenge on her husband. A spiral of stories, in which nothing and no-one is what it seems.
330'
Portugal
IFFR 2011
Ballet aquatique
In one of his very last projects, Raul Ruiz celebrates the films of his historical predecessor Jean Painlevé, a documentary innovator whose work always blended science with surrealism. Ruiz and friends further perfect the art of mystification. Screened together with La maleta.
50'
France
IFFR 2012
La maleta
Ruiz started his film career with an almost literal mise-en-abyme story: a man carries another man in his suitcase. When tired, they switch roles. Screened before Ballet aquatique.
19'
Chile
IFFR 2012
La noche de enfrente
Last film directed by Ruiz, the most screened director in the history of the Rotterdam Film Festival. A farewell letter from a free-associating, intensely lucid rascal. What story there is, is about a retired Chilean who’s waiting for his murderer.
110'
France
IFFR 2013
Epistolar
Five pesos and a cup of coffee on a table top. Raúl Ruiz gets the most from this minimal set-up, both visually and through the laconic soundtrack.
7'
Chile
IFFR 2017
Le film à venir
One of the most emblematic films by the master concerns a holy fragment of celluloid that can only be seen by a secret society known as the Philokinetes.
8'
Switzerland
IFFR 2017
La telenovela errante
Ruiz, who passed away in 2011, posthumously delights with his 121st film, shot in 1990 and completed by his widow Sarmiento – a hilarious, absurdist, satirical commentary (in the form of a seven-part soap opera) on the political-social landscape he found upon returning to Catholic-capitalist Chile after years of exile.
80'
Chile
IFFR 2018