María Ripoll

María Ripoll
Ripoll at the 2017 Miami International Film Festival presentation of Don't Blame the Karma for Being an Idiot
Born	1964 Barcelona
Nationality	Spain
Occupation	Director

María Ripoll is a Spanish film director from Barcelona, with an international background and eight feature films to her credit. The success of her film It's Now or Never has placed her as the highest-grossing female film director in Spanish history.

María Ripoll was born in 1964 in Barcelona. She studied acting and screenwriting in Los Angeles at the American Film Institute (AFI), where she shot the short film Kill Me Later.

Her first feature-length film, The Man with Rain in His Shoes starring Lena Headey, Douglas Henshall and Penelope Cruz won Best Screenplay at the Montreal Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Sitges Film Festival, the Seattle Women’s Film Festival. It led to Ripoll being nominated for a Goya Award for Best New Director.

She then directed Tortilla Soup in Los Angeles starring Hector Elizondo, Jacqueline Obradors, Raquel Welch and Elizabeth Peña. Produced by Samuel Goldwyn Jr, it was a noted success, breaking Latin American stereotypes on its way to nine nominations at the ALMA Awards. She then shot a documentary in New York, WITNESS: Cameras Against Violence, for Canal Plus.

On her return to Spain, Ripoll shot her third feature film Utopia, which enters the terrain of the fantastic thriller and premiered in 2003. In Barcelona she then directed Your Life in 65, a film based on the play by Albert Espinosa. This film was invited to numerous festivals, including the AFI Los Angeles Film Festival and the Stockholm International Film Festival and was another success in Spain. For Televisión Española (TVE) she directed Fame, Everything for a Dream and then turned to producing as well as directing Chromosome 5, a documentary for TVE. It was well received in Spain and around the world, earning Best Picture in the Bosifest-Belgrade film festival amongst others.