Neither you nor I

Laura Maria Isabel Ruiz Ocadiz was born in 1983 in Mexico City, in the cradle of a family of musicians. A fanatic of the seventh art, Mexican melodrama and classical literature, she developed her abilities in different artistic disciplines from an early age, including acting for musical drama at the Artestudio academy. Years later, she graduated with a Bachelor of Psychology (her thesis "Incidency of Nervous Anorexia and Bulimia in a Group of Female Ballet Dancers" was selected by the Tepeyac University Degree Department as the best of 2007). Being a cinephile, she gained a certain popularity online thanks to her film critic blog, years before the rise of modern social media. This was a milestone that led her to collaborate with "F.I.L.M.E. Magazine", providing her cinematographic analysis of several works, and to be featured as a guest in the National Polytechnic Institute Radio (Radio Instituto Politécnico Nacional) show. In 2010, she attained a scholarship from the General Society of Writers of Mexico (SOGEM), and upon finishing her studies in literature —while working as a member of the Neurological Center Research Department at the ABC Medical Center Hospital—, she contributed to the aforementioned insitution's scientific magazine "Medical Annual" ("Anales Médicos") while looking for a creative outlet. It was then when, in 2014, CONACULTA (today the Ministry of Culture [Secretaría de Cultura]) selected her as the Art House and Auteur Film T.V. spot screenwriter for the Cinema 22 film block, at Channel 22 (Canal 22). Her artistic career naturally branched off into the making of the short films "The Gift" ("El Regalo", 2015) —made the same year she finished her Film Directing course, thaught by mexican filmmaker and actor Diego Luna—, "Nothing is what it seems" ("Nada es lo que parece", 2016) and "Abyss" ("Abismo", 2017), all of which she produced (after founding her first studio, Luminosa Films), wrote and directed, ultimately getting them screened in several National Festivals; one of these shorts, particularly, on the screens of the National Cinematheque of Mexico (Cineteca Nacional de México). She decided to continue refining her skills and increasing her cinematographic knowledge with a Master's Degree in Cinematography from Altrafílmica, which at the end she complemented —after being chosen for a scholarship by the Editor, Writer and Director Juan Pablo Cortés ("Love Hurts" ["Amar te duele", 2002]; "Luciana", 2010)— with the Film Editing course at the Center for Cinematographic Studies (CEC) in Mexico City. In 2018, she married actor and Film Editor Roberto Eduardo Arenas Farquet (with whom she founded Luminosa Publishing, in 2018, and her second arthouse film studio, Pertúrpure Cinema, in 2021) and enjoyed a well-deserved break from cinema that led her to publish three literary fiction novels: "Amnesty", ("Amnistía", 2018), "Steve's Canotier: Life and Truth" ("El canotier de Steve: La verdad y la vida", 2020), and "A Wakefulness of Indocility" ("Un desvelo de indocilidad", 2021). After this very productive hiatus, she came back to filming for good, writing and directing the 2021 released short films "Neither You Nor I" ("Ni tú ni yo"), "Misplace the Rabbits" ("Extraviar los conejos"), and "We Are a Motive" ("Somos un motivo"); and her 2022 silent short film "Love Without a Casket" ("Amor sin féretro"), showcased on her very own free streaming channel LuminosaCanal.com.

Maria currently resides somewhere in the beautiful and mysterious Mexico, where she enjoys conversations about literature and cinema with her husband; while tending to the endless demands of her two attention-freak cats.

Official site: LuminosaCanal.com

Official verified account: @mariaruizocadiz
(vero.co/mariaruizocadiz)