Directing

Laura Maria Isabel Ruiz Ocadiz

Biography

Laura Maria Isabel Ruiz Ocadiz was born in 1983 in Mexico City, in the cradle of a family of musicians. A fanatic of the seventh art, mexican melodrama and classical literature, she developed her abilities in different artistic disciplines from an early age, including Acting for Musical Comedies at the Artestudio academy. Years later, she graduated with a Bachelor of Psychology (her thesis in the "Incidency of Nervous Anorexia and Bulimia in a group of female ballet dancers" was selected by the Tepeyac University Degree Department as the best of 2007). Being a cinephile, she gained a certain popularity online as an amateur movie reviewer, years before the rise of modern social media. This was a milestone that led her to collaborate with the online magazine "F.I.L.M.E. Magazine", providing her cinematographic analysis of several works, and to be featured as a guest in National Polytechnic Institute Radio (Radio Instituto Politécnico Nacional). In 2010, she attained a scholarship from the General Society of Writers of Mexico (SOGEM), and upon finishing her studies in literature —while working as a member of the Neurological Center Research Department at the ABC Medical Center Hospital—, she contributed to the aforementioned insitution's scientific magazine "Medical Annual" (Anales Médicos) while looking for a creative outlet. It was then when, in 2014, CONACULTA (today the Ministry of Culture [Secretaría de Cultura]) selected her as the Art House and Auteur Film T.V. spot screenwriter for the Cinema 22 film block, at Channel 22 (Canal 22). Her artistic career naturally branched off into the making of the short films "The Git" (El Regalo, 2015) —made the same year she finished her Film Directing course, thaught by mexican filmmaker and actor Diego Luna—, "Nothing is what it seems" (Nada es lo que parece, 2016) and "Abyss" (Abismo, 2017), all of which she wrote and directed, ultimately getting them screened in several National Festivals; one of these shorts, particularly, on the screens of the National Cinematheque of Mexico (Cineteca Nacional De México). She decided to continue increasing her knowledge with a Master's Degree in Cinematography from Altrafílmica, which at the end she complemented —after being chosen for a scholarship by the editor, writer and director Juan Pablo Cortés ("Love Hurts" [Amar te duele, 2002]; "Luciana", 2010)— with the Film Editing course at the Center for Cinematographic Studies (CEC) in Mexico City. In 2018, she married actor and film editor Roberto Eduardo Arenas Farquet, and enjoyed a well-deserved break from cinema that led her to publish three literary fiction novels: "Amnesty", (Amnistía, 2018), "Steve's boater: Truth and life" (El canotier de Steve: La verdad y la vida", 2020), and "A wakefulness of indocility" (Un desvelo de indocilidad, 2021). She finally went back to filming on 2021, writing and directing the short films "Neither you nor I" (Ni tú ni yo), "Misplace the rabbits" (Extraviar los conejos), "We are a motive" (Somos un motivo), and "Love without a casket" (Amor sin féretro), all of them released on LuminosaCanal.com, her very own streaming channel. Maria is currently working on her debut full-length feature: the arthouse adaptation of her literary fiction novel "A wakefulness of indocility". Official Vero account: @mariaruizocadiz