He graduated from Mexico's Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, a state-funded film school, with a bachelor's degree in film directing and cinematography.
His father was the son of a Russian émigré who had fled the 1917 revolution. His mother was herself an émigré who left Argentina after the 1976 military coup that launched the bloody "dirty war".
He was a prominent Mexican documentary filmmaker. His most acclaimed movies document the impoverished indigenous population of Mexico being treated as third-class citizens.