Alfonso Arau Incháustegui is a Mexican filmmaker and actor. He worked as an actor and director in both Mexican and Hollywood productions for over 40 years, before his international breakthrough with the 1992 film Like Water for Chocolate, based on his wife Laura Esquivel's novel of the same name. His other films include A Walk in the Clouds (1995), Picking Up the Pieces (2000), The Magnificent Ambersons (2002) and Zapata: El sueño del héroe (2004). He is a five-time Ariel Award winner, including Best Director for Like Water for Chocolate, and a BAFTA nominee.

Laura Beatriz Esquivel Valdés is a Mexican novelist, screenwriter and politician, serving in the LXIII Legislature of the Mexican Congress in the Chamber of Deputies for the Morena Party from 2015 to 2018. Her first novel Como agua para chocolate became a bestseller in Mexico and the United States, and was later developed into an award-winning film.