Ripstein's first film-a Western directed from a screenplay by Gabriel García Márquez* and Carlos Fuentes-established him, at the age of 21, as a Mexican wunderkind. In this Anthony Mann-like tale, a reluctant gunfighter, having spent 18 years locked up for killing a man in a duel in which he was forced to take part, returns to his village, where his victim's sons have sworn vengeance. "I liked the idea of vengeance, the idea of loneliness," Ripstein says of Time to Die. "I liked old people, I don't know why. Perhaps this interest in a relatively old man was a sort of resistance so that I didn't start copying the Nouvelle Vague too much." *(Márquez also wrote the screenplay for the 1985 Colombian/Cuban version of Tiempo de Morir.)