Eva Aridjis

Eva S. Aridjis, born 1974 in the Netherlands while her father was serving there as Mexico's ambassador, is a Mexican filmmaker. She later attended the American School Foundation in Mexico City, Princeton University, and New York University. She has made many prize-winning short and feature-length films.

Born in the Netherlands on July 24, 1974, raised in Mexico City, and now living in New York City, Aridjis is the daughter of the Greek-Mexican writer, Homero Aridjis, and the American environmental activist and translator, Betty Ferber de Aridjis. Her sister is writer Chloe Aridjis.

Aridjis left Mexico City when she was 18 to study Comparative Literature at Princeton University, and then she earned an MFA in Film and Television at New York University (1996–2001).

While at NYU she made several short films, including Taxidermy: The Art of Imitating Life and Billy Twist, both of which played at the Sundance Film Festival and dozens of other festivals around the world.

An activist for many of Mexico City's street children, in 2003 she made the film Niños de la Calle (Children of the Street), to bring attention to the epidemic.[1] The documentary was nominated for two Mexican Academy Awards (Arieles), and won the Best Feature Documentary prize at the Morelia Film Festival in 2003. Since making this movie in 2001, Aridjis has stayed in contact with the protagonists.

In 2004, she wrote and directed her first narrative feature film, The Favor (2006), starring Frank Wood and Ryan Donowho. The film, which is also her first English-language feature film, premiered at the CineVegas Film Festival in June 2006, where it won a prize. Ryan Donowho also won the "Best Actor" prize at the San Diego Film Festival for his performance in the film. The Favor was released theatrically in Mexico in 2007 and in the United States in 2008, and is currently airing on the Sundance Channel.

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