Venezuelan filmmaker Margot Benacerraf, pioneer of Latin American cinema, died at the age of 97

Pioneer of the South American 7th art, Margot Benacerraf died in Caracas at the age of 97, her family announced in a press release published Wednesday May 29, 2024.

Margot Benacerraf won the International Critics’ Prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival for her film Araya. A poetic black-and-white documentary about the lives of salt mine workers in northeastern Venezuela, with commentary written by the poet Pierre Seghers and said by the actor and director Laurent Terzieff. A critics’ prize that she will share with Alain Resnais, rewarded for Hiroshima my love.

Margot Benacerraf also presented at Cannes in 1953 Reveron, a documentary about the Venezuelan painter Armando Reveron, considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century in Latin America. The filmmaker is also behind the founding of the National Cinematheque of Venezuela in 1966.

The director “was not only a pioneer of cinema, but she was part of the Latin American New Wave group. She is not mentioned anywhere, and men placed little value on her because she was the only woman“, declared during a recent interview Milvia Villamizar, head of the collection of the Margot Benacerraf Foundation, about the director with an often overshadowed career.

The director “was not only a pioneer of cinema, but she was part of the Latin American New Wave group. She is not mentioned anywhere, and men placed little value on her because she was the only woman“, declared during a recent interview Milvia Villamizar, head of the collection of the Margot Benacerraf Foundation, about the director with an often overshadowed career.