THE BEGINNING AND THE END (PRINCIPIO Y FIN) Tribute to Americas Film Festival

Based on the novel by 1988 Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, Arturo Ripstein’s monumental work is at once breathtakingly dramatic and heartbreakingly mundane. After the death of its patriarch, the Botero family is left forsaken. Widow Ignacia sends her three eldest children off to work and puts all of her hopes in Gabriel, her smart, handsome, youngest son. However, fate has a hand in the proceedings, and nothing turns out as planned. Hypnotically absorbing in its attention to detail, the film’s beauty lies in the characters’ resolute will to survive against all odds. The Beginning and the End is a landmark work from one of Mexico’s premiere directors.-Eddie Cockrell