Margot Benacerraf
Margot Benacerraf (14 August 1926 – 29 May 2024) was a Venezuelan film director known for her documentary films Reverón and Araya. She was born in Caracas to Jewish immigrants. She studied literature and philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela, graduating in 1947, then spent three months at Columbia University in New York and later studied cinema in Paris at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC).
Reverón, about the Venezuelan painter Armando Reverón, and Araya, about the salt workers in Araya, are considered important works in Latin American documentary cinema. Araya premiered in 1959 at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Cannes International Critics Prize (shared with Hiroshima mon amour).
Benacerraf founded the Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela in 1966 and led it for three years. She also helped promote Latin American cinema in Venezuela, including creating Latin Fundavisual in 1991 with Gabriel García Márquez. She received multiple honors, such as the Venezuelan National Prize of Cinema (1995) and decorations from several countries.
A movie theater at the Ateneo de Caracas was named after her in 1987, and she received the Paez Medal of Art in 2019. Margot Benacerraf died in Caracas on 29 May 2024, aged 97.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 15:20 (CET).