Max Kerlow
Prolific Mexican actor with more than 100 films in his filmography. His first intention was to be a painter. However, life would take him on other paths and his incursion into the world of the arts would be as an architect, a career he studied at the suggestion of a cousin just out of school, given his interest in painting, and from which he graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1954. Shortly after, he dedicated himself to promoting crafts with artists such as Manuel Felguérez and Felipe Ehrenberg, one of his first assistants. With Felguérez he devised a different line of ceramics and with Ehrenberg he invented a technique for painting on amate paper, which he later taught to indigenous people in the facilities of his café-gallery La Amargura, located on the street of the same name in the San Ángel neighborhood. As a painter he only mounted one exhibition, although every day he drew and made caricatures from the news in the newspapers: "One ends up with more or less possibilities of doing what one wanted, although, as Picasso said, at this age is when one has more desire to do things; I feel that one understands them better, knows better what one wants to do, but it is already too late," he acknowledges in the documentary by Carolina Kerlow. However, it would be in the acting facet in which he would stand out the most and which would give Max Kerlow the most satisfaction. He began his career in Mexican cinema in 1963 under the direction of Juan José Gurrola in Confesión de Stavroguin. A friend of directors such as Paul Leduc, Felipe Cazals and Arturo Ripstein, it was natural for him to be invited to participate in their films, although Max Kerlow assured that he always liked acting: "I was invited to parties sometimes just to tell jokes; I have my diploma as a joke teller". He was also a magician. He was even able to combine his interests: "When Miguel Littin said "we are going to Chihuahua to film Actas de Marusia (1976), I took the opportunity to bring my catalogs and sold my crafts very well". And he was not just any actor making any movie. His film performances are proof of his histrionic quality. He participated in Las Poquianchis (1976), El apando (Felipe Cazals / 1976), Fox Trot (Arturo Ripstein / 1976); Frida, naturaleza viva (Paul Leduc / 1983), where he played the role of Leon Trotsky, Cabeza de Vaca (Nicolas Echevarria / 1991); Cómodas mensualidades (Julian Pastor / 1992); Kino (Felipe Cazals / 1993); De noche vienes Esmeralda (Jaime Humberto Hermosillo / 1997); La hija del caníbal o Lucía, Lucía (Antonio Serrano / 2003), Morirse está en hebreo (Alejandro Springall / 2007); Cinco días sin Nora (Mariana Chenillo, 2008). In 1998 he won the Ariel Award for best male co-acting for his performance in Por si no te vuelvo a ver (Juan Pablo Villaseñor, 1997), debut film of the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC). In the Italian film Mediterráneo (1991), directed by Gabriele Salvatores, winner of the Oscar for best foreign film, Max Kerlow had a leading role. He also participated in documentaries and commercials.
Cabeza de Vaca
as Man in armorAn international award winning saga of old Mexico. In 1528, a Spanish expedition flounders off...
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A Wonderful World
as SacerdoteA fairy tale about the political and socioeconomic realities of Mexico.
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The Bees
as Representative at the United Nations - U.S.S.R.Corporate smuggling of South American killer bees into the United States results in huge swarms...
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Las Poquianchis
as Reportero (uncredited)During the mid-1970s, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, authorities discover a clandestine...
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The Mansion of Madness
as Dr. MaillardThe inmates of an insane asylum take over the institution, imprison the doctors and staff, and...
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I Escaped from Devil's Island
as PelliserreIn 1916, a group of prisoners plot their escape from the notorious fortress located in French...
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Sea of Dreams
as Glass blowerOn an island across the sea lies a village full of romance, wonder and mystery; a timeless place...
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I Murder Seriously
as Don EulalioA cop sets out to find a man who has been delivering too much of a good thing in this offbeat...
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Frida Still Life
as Leon TrotskyThis film is a chronicle of painter Frida Kahlo, and her encounter with the personalities of her...
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Maria of My Heart
as Esposo de madrinaHéctor and María meet again after eight years of not seeing each other. She works as a magician...
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Nora's Will
as Rabbi JacowitzJose learns that Nora, the woman he was married to for 30 years and from whom divorced, has...
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Compassionate Sex
as Vendedor de colmadoDolores is a mature and kind woman whose husband abandons her because he can't stand her uncanny...
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Letters from Marusia
as EngineerChronicle of the repression that a foreign company exerts on the miners of a small nitrate town...
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The Heist
as Preso del suéter amarilloIn Mexico City's infamous Lecumberri prison, three drug-addicted convicts celebrate getting...
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Esmeralda Comes by Night
as Priest in hospitalThe husbands of a charismatic nurse devise a plan to free her from prison when she is arrested...
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Naufragio
as Marino IIIOne woman lives waiting for her son who is a sailor. She hasn't seen him for years although he...
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Lucía, Lucía
as Old WehnerLucia, an children's book author, tells the story of her husband's disappearance. One day on...
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Sex Education In Brief Lessons
as uncreditedAlejandra and Ana are college friends, both are virgin and hope to find the love of their life...
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Foxtrot
as CaptainA Romanian aristocrat retreats to a desert isle with his wife and servants on the eve of World...
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Aunt Isabel's Garden
as uncreditedA ship carrying Conquistadors is wrecked and the survivors are thrown ashore to struggle through...
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Bandidos
as SacerdoteIn the wake of the Mexican Revolution, a band of pre-teen boys are forced to rely on their own...
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La casta divina
as Arzobispo de YucatánChronicle Caste War in Yucatan held in the nineteenth century, where the land and the people...
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El Viaje de la Nonna
as Public NotaryA Mexican family, wanting to grant their Grandmother her last wish, embarks on a make believe...
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El tesoro de Clotilde
as JustoClotilde dies, and her god-daughter has promised to carry out a final wish for her. Two gangs of...
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Pubertinaje
as uncreditedThree episodes: 1) "A Christmas dinner" where the family members fantasize about being somewhere...
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The Aztec Karate Fighter
as Fritz KartoffelPotter who makes fake pre-Colombian statues gets mixed up with thieves and treasure-hunters at...
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Reed: Insurgent Mexico
as Antonio SwafeytaA dramatization of John Reed's newspaper accounts of the Mexican Revolution. Considered the...
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The Prophet Mimi
as Don PacoChildhood trauma and religious repression causes little boy to grow up and murder .
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Kino: The Legend of the Black Priest
as Italian Superior PriestPropped up on his deathbed, a 17th century Spanish missionary named Father Kino (Enrique Rocha)...
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The Queen of the Night
as SergeThe legendary life of Mexican singer Lucha Reyes is the basis of this fictionalized biography (...
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The Coming of the King Olmos
as uncreditedAfter spending some time with the Mennonite community in Chihuahua, Reynaldo Olmos goes back to...
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Luces de la noche
as Engineer KleinOn a whim, a retired gentleman decides to track down an old girlfriend from decades back.
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The Humiliated
as uncreditedFour nuns are raped by a group of lepers. Although they all turn out to be pregnant, their...
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Three Stories of Love
as uncreditedThree people live in the same building: An anxious teenager, a girl who wants to be kidnapped by...
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Cómodas mensualidades
as uncreditedYoung married guy is overwhelmed by the expenses involved with starting a family.
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One Hundred Years with Juan Rulfo
as SelfThis documentary explores key moments in the life of writer Juan Rulfo, with artists such as...
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En defensa propia
as uncreditedThe leading edge of working-class discontent in a Mexican village is a troop of bandits hiding...
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What Do You Think?
as uncreditedAward-Winning filmmaker Paul Leduc (Frida, Naturaleza Viva, Reed: Insurgent Mexico, Barroco)...
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My Mexican Shivah
as RubinsteinAfter Moishe's death, family and friends sit Shiva in Mexico City. During seven days, secrets...
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El viaje
as uncreditedAfter the death of his mother, a man agrees to travel to Europe as a tourist guide falls in love...
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Perfume, efecto inmediato
as uncreditedA cosmetologist invents a perfume that helps her sister seduce her boss. When her boss realizes...
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If I Never See You Again
as GonzaloFive elderly men form a music group and run away from the nursing home where they are interns...
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Those Years
as Von ThunPresident Juárez fights against the conservatives, who have ordered an emperor to be brought...
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The Diabolical
as Dueño de la tiendaDave Boland (Carlos East) wears a strange medallion and robs the bank. He also takes the...
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Ziuta Travesías
as Max KerlowZiuta, Polish, Jewish and survivor of the Second World War, was an extraordinary woman who...
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