The Castle of Purity

Story

Lima is an obsessively over-protective, controlling father of three. To protect his family from the “devilish nature of the human species”, he isolates them from the outside world. Since the birth of his first child 18 years ago, the family has lived reclusively in their slowly decaying villa in Mexico City. But Lima’s efforts to protect his children from the unclean and degenerate are being jeopardized by an increasingly incestuous relationship between the two eldest children. On top of that, the main source of income – the production of rat poison – is under pressure because of an inspection by the authorities. Lima’s monstrous facade is threatening to fall apart. Castle of Purity is a bizarre, subversive drama that won the Mexican film prize in five categories.

Director

Arturo Ripstein (*1943) began his career as an assistant to Luis Buñuel and many of his early films recall the master's surreal cinematic language. He often adapted works by Latin American authors for the screen as for instance No-one Writes to the Colonel (1999) which is based on a short story by Gabriel García Márquez.