Rubén Rojo Aura is a Mexican film director, screenwriter and producer. He began his artistic career at the age of eight as an actor in the theatre production El soldadito de plomo, later appearing in the feature film Elisa… antes del fin del mundo by Juan Antonio de la Riva (1996). He studied Film Directing at the Russian-Mexican Institute of Cinema and Acting “Serguei Eisenstein” in Mexico City (2002–2006) and completed an Acting Direction Workshop at the International Film and TV School of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba (2007).
In 2008, he won IMCINE’s National Short Film Competition with Carretera del Norte, a 35mm fiction film that earned over twenty national and international awards, including the Diosa de Plata for Best Short Film. He later co-produced Ella(s) (2009), directed by David Baute, winner of the Silver Biznaga “Women’s Rights” Award at the Málaga Spanish Film Festival and the Malvinas Award at the Trieste Latin American Film Festival.
In 2014, Rojo Aura founded Apapacho Films, a company dedicated to facilitating co-productions between Mexico and Spain, and has collaborated on several animated series for children. His acclaimed documentary The Nightingale and the Night. Chavela Vargas sings Lorca (2015) explores the deep emotional and artistic connection between singer Chavela Vargas and poet Federico García Lorca. The film received IBERMEDIA co-production support, premiered at the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and won Best Documentary and Best Director at Pantalla de Cristal Festival.
In 2022, he directed his first fiction feature Coraje, a Mexico–Spain co-production that received multiple awards including the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and several Pantalla de Cristal awards, as well as a nomination for Best Actress at the Ariel Awards (2023).
Rubén Rojo Aura currently teaches scriptwriting and film language at Arte 7 film school in Mexico and is developing his next feature Amadeo alongside the screenplay Un muro bajo el agua, selected by the Mediterranean Film Institute’s Script2Film workshop and the IBERMEDIA Project Development Course in Madrid.
