Raoul Ruiz

Briefly

Raoul Ruiz, who died on 19 August at the age of 70, was a French-Chilean filmmaker who directed John Malkovich as the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt and worked to put cinema on an artistic par with literature.

Ruiz directed Malkovich as the Austrian art nouveau painter in Klimt in 2006, and in the course of a long career he directed numerous European stars, including the Laetitia Casta, Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni.

Born in Puerto Montt in Chile in 1941, Ruiz fled to France in 1973 when Augusto Pinochet seized power. After several years producing and directing low-budget television films, he began working with larger budgets in 1996 with Three Lives and Only One Death. The following year he directed Genealogies of a Crime, starring Deneuve.

He was married to Valeria Sarmiento, a film director and editor.