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Must See Unconventional Dog Movies: Researchers would list out a lot of benefits of dog ownership/companionship. I mean sometimes one’s profound sadness can vaporize when looking at the strangely appealing eyes and long drooping ears of a dog. The way your canine pal scurries away when you are angry, or the way it dashes around in little circles vying for your attention, or the look it gives you when its forelegs are on the ground and head resting between them, dogs are the picture of unconditional love and adoration. The limited lifespan of a pet dog also teaches us a thing or two about death and grief.

Stories of dog ownership in cinema tend to mostly lurch toward the cute and cuddly. Of course, we need movies like “Old Yeller” (1957) or “Marley & Me” (2008) where our furry friends are at the center of ceaseless heart-warming entertainment. But the...

There are no known recordings of Frida Kahlo’s voice. But the iconic painter, who died in 1954, tells her own story in director Carla Gutiérrez’s documentary “Frida,” which is guided by her words (spoken by actress Fernanda Echevarría) from interviews, essays and diaries.

Acclaimed for its semi-animated visual strategy, the film (available on Amazon Prime) is also a sensory aural experience, propelled by a passionate, rhapsodic score by Victor Hernández Stumpfhauser. The Burbank-based, Mexican-born conductor and songwriter’s credits include features, shorts and three compositions on the “Birdman” soundtrack.

For the documentary, he said, “I thought of the music as Frida’s inner voice, sort of like her spirit. We think of Frida as very strong, loud, rebellious, which is an important part of her, but I wanted the music to also relate to the vulnerable, intimate side of her personality. It’s an aspect of Frida we don...

Jurors at the EnergaCamerimage cinematography fest say the Golden Frog main competition films have been remarkably varied and inspiring in the event’s 32nd edition.

The 12 competing films “were radically different from each other,” said “Barbie” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, whose directorial debut, “Pedro Paramo,” is also screening at the fest. “I enjoyed that.”

The varied styles, approaches and storytellers, he added, defied easy categorization. “Happily, I didn’t notice trends, which I have noticed sometimes in the past in some festivals.”

Juror Anthony Dod Mantle, who won Golden Frogs in 2008 for his lensing of “Slumdog Millionaire” and in 2016 for “Snowden,” said, “I’ve been to this festival before and the overall collection of films and categories, I felt, was even wider. I feel slight absence of certain films from other ethnic backgrounds. They were different, these films, but they could be far more different.

Mexico’s has selected “Sujo” as the country’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards. The movie written and directed by Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and will hit theaters November 29.

After a cartel gunman from a small Mexican town is murdered, Sujo (Kevin Uriel Aguilar Luna/Juan Jesús Varel), his beloved four-year-old son, is left an orphan and in danger. Sujo narrowly escapes death with the help of his aunt who raises him in the isolated countryside amidst hardship, poverty, and the constant peril associated with his identity.When he enters his teens a rebelliousness awakens in him, and like a rite of passage, he joins the local cartel. As a young man, Sujo attempts to make his life anew, away from the violence of his hometown. However, when his father...

Travis Kelce wasn’t the only person Taylor Swift thanked while accepting her 2024 MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year on Wednesday. Swift – who won seven awards during the ceremony, bringing her lifetime total to 30, tying Beyonce for the most VMAs ever – made sure to show gratitude to several collaborators who helped her make the video for “Fortnight,” including stars Josh Charles and Ethan Hawke, featured artist Post Malone, and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.

“Directing this video and putting it together and writing it was the most wonderful experience. And that is because of all the people that I got to make it with, and that includes Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles who were amazing cameos,” she said. “That includes my amazing cinematographer/Dp Rodrigo Prieto, who goes out of his way to work with female directors. He’s a genius, and I can’t believe I got to work with him.

The International Cinematographers Guild (Icg) will recognize two acclaimed professionals at award ceremonies later this year. Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto will receive the Distinguished Filmmaker Award. M. David Mullen will receive the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Mentor Award.

Prieto has worked on blockbuster films and critically-acclaimed independents. His credits range from Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon” to Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” Prieto first found success with director Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2000s films like “Babel,” “21 Grams,” and “Amores Perros.” He has shown versatility across genres with work on movies such as “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Argo,” and “8 Mile.”

Prieto is set to make his directorial debut with an adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s novel “Pedro Paramo.” He also received a 2024 MTV Video Music Award nomination for his cinematography on a Taylor Swift music video. The Icg says Prieto represents excellence in his field.

The International Cinematographers Guild will hand its Distinguished Filmmaker Award to Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto at this year’s Emerging Cinematographer Awards.

Born and raised in Mexico, Prieto was at the center of the early 2000’s renaissance of Mexican cinema, working on now-celebrated features like Babel, 21 Grams, and Amores Perros with Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Prieto’s next project–his feature film directorial debut–is an adaptation of the novel Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, one of the most revered Mexican novels of the 20th century.

Also a frequent collaborator of screen legend Martin Scorsese, Prieto has been nominated for four Academy Awards for his work on Killers of the Flower Moon, The Irishman, Silence, and Brokeback Mountain. Other notable features photographed by Prieto include Barbie, The Wolf of Wall Street, Argo, and 8 Mile. Prieto was nominated for a 2024 MTV Video Music Award for his work on Fortnight by Taylor Swift,...

Film at Lincoln Center and Cinema Tropical are honoring the legacy of Brazil’s iconic L.C. Barreto Film Productions with retrospective “Isso é Brasil: Cinema According to L.C. Barreto Productions.”

The 13-film festival commemorates 60 years of Barreto-produced features. The series will take place from September 6 through 15 at Lincoln Center.

Director Bruno Barreto and producer Lucy Barreto will both be in attendance to introduce select screenings and take part in Q&As for the new 4K restorations of beloved films like “The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga” and “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands,” which catapulted actress Sônia Braga to international fame. The feature was also Brazil’s highest-grossing film for more than 30 years.

L.C. Barreto Productions was founded in 1963 by Luiz Carlos and Lucy Barreto and is based in Rio de Janeiro. According to a press release, the Barreto family company is Brazil’s most important film...

Una compleja investigación de un doble asesinato en un lugar marcado por la Guerra Civil. © Movistar Plus+

Ha comenzado el rodaje de “Terra Alta”, la nueva serie original de Movistar Plus+ que adapta la novela homónima de Javier Cercas. Se trata de un thriller policíaco cuyo punto de partida es el asesinato de dos importantes empresarios en Cataluña con una investigación a cargo de un policía con un pasado oculto.

“Terra Alta”, situada en la comarca de la Terra Alta, en Tarragona, es un lugar de belleza salvaje, donde aún sangran las cicatrices de la Guerra Civil. Un territorio tranquilo hasta que el asesinato de Francisco y Rosa Adell, patriarcas de la familia más rica y poderosa del lugar, conmociona a todos. Este suceso hace que Melchor Marín, uno de los agentes encargados de la investigación, reviva su oscuro, complejo y olvidado pasado.

La serie está protagonizada por Miguel Bernardeau...

Exclusive: Sarah Jones and Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza are set for series regular roles in Prime Video’s comic book series with the working title El Gato. They join the previously announced leads Diego Boneta and Lorenza Izzo.

Based on the comic series El Gato Negro by Richard Dominguez, El Gato follows Frank Guerrero (Boneta), who returns home to Mexico after the death of his father and finds himself neck-deep in a nest of vipers – his estranged family – who are vying for control of his father’s business empire. But Frank’s grief is interrupted when he learns his only inheritance, a seemingly worthless parcel of land on the border, sits atop the lair of a famous costumed vigilante — his father, “El Gato.” Now, Frank is in the crosshairs. To survive, he’ll have to solve mysteries decades in the...

Veteran international film executive Rosa Bosch has partnered with Spanish distributor and sales agency Begin Again Films, joining the company’s international department.

Madrid-based Begin Again Films is known for handling arthouse fare such as doc The Year of Discovery, Zaida Carmona’s Girlfriends and Girlfriends and Nestor Ruiz Medina’s 21 Paradise.

Bosch joins as Begin Again also takes on sales for Anna Cornudella’s The Human Hibernation, winner of the Fipresci Award in the Forum section of the Berlinale 2024.

A veteran of the international film industry, Bosch’s career includes roles at AFI Fest, the London Film Festival...

Veteran producer and sales agent Rosa Bosch has joined the Madrid-based distributor and international sales agency Begin Again Films. Bosch will serve as part of the company’s international department.

Bosch has previously held roles at AFI Fest, the London Film Festival, the National Film Theatre in London (Deputy Director), and the San Sebastian Film Festival. She was a founding partner of the production company and international sales agency, Tequila Gang, along with Guillermo del Toro, Laura Esquivel, Bertha Navarro, and Alejandra Moreno. As a producer, her credits include titles such as Buena Vista Social Club by Wim Wenders, The Devil’s Backbone by Guillermo del Toro, The Gospel of Wonders by Arturo Ripstein, and Broken Silence by Montxo Armendáriz.

Bosch led the international launch and distribution strategy of films such as Amores Perros by Alejandro González Iñarritu and Corpo Celeste by Alice Rorhwacher. She also served as the Managing Director...

Mexican supervising sound editor Martín Hernández, who was Oscar-nominated for Best Sound Editing for Birdman and The Revenant in 2014 and 2015 respectively, says the category is wide open this year due to the variety of movies in the running.

Features nominated in the category span The Zone of Interest, Oppenheimer and Maestro as well as surprise short list entries The Creator and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

“Isn’t that unfair? I mean, they’re so different and the work in every one of them is equally good. That’s gonna be tough,” Hernández told Deadline in a one-on-one at the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra event in Qatar this week.

Hernández, who has been a voting member of the Academy since 2015, refrained from saying anything else about the films in the running for the Best Sound trophy on Sunday for fear of breaking the org’s rules for voters.

Oscar-nominated Mexican sound designer Martin Hernandez has given new details about his latest project, Netflix documentary series The Master Of Monarchs [working title], which will launch on the platform later this year.

The series takes flight with the story of the Monarch butterfly and its journey from Canada to El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Preserve, a nature reserve in Mexico. The keeper of the reserve, environmental activist Homero Gomez, was murdered in 2020. It is believed he was killed because he stood up against organised crime groups.

The Master Of Monarchs will feature interviews with Gomez’s wife and children.

“It’s a great documentary.

There are many films based on the underbellies and the red-light districts of cities around the world. Most of the stories surrounding them are dramas or crime-related and throw light on the lives of the people barely living on the money they earn through prostitution or other illegal activities. Redlife is a Thai-language neo-noir drama, directed by Ekalak Klunson, released on October 25, 2023. The movie is two hours long and discusses the lives led by young men and women living on the streets of Bangkok and trying to find a purpose in life.

The movie begins with Som, a young teenager who has been facing issues because her mother, Aoi, is a prostitute. The mother is trying her best to provide her daughter with a proper education. Aoi does not want her daughter to join her profession and works hard to gather enough for their living and school fees. Aoi has...

In director Roger Ross Williams’ Cassandro, we first meet Saúl Armendáriz — the real-life luchador portrayed by Gael García Bernal — when he’s still scraping his way through the amateur circuit. He’s got an uphill battle ahead: Not only is he smaller and lighter than most of his brawny opponents, he’s also openly gay and the subject of taunts and jeers from his leotard-clad colleagues.

And then, about 20 minutes in, Cassandro arrives. Armendáriz decides to embrace a new identity as one of lucha libre’s exoticos, extravagant male fighters...

Veteran cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto’s versatility could not be more evident than in his most recent work, which called for filming a 1920s Osage Nation in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and shooting the candy-colored Barbie Land of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Born in Mexico City to a bicultural family (his mom is an American from Montana), Prieto caught the cinematography world’s attention in 2000 when he won the Camerimage Golden Frog for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Amores Perros. Since moving to the U.S., he continued lensing for Iñárritu while also collaborating with Pedro Almodóvar, Oliver Stone, Ben Affleck (on the Oscar best picture winner Argo) and Ang Lee, whose Brokeback Mountain delivered the Dp the first of his three Academy Award nominations. Pietro, who is also this month’s THR Titan, has also earned Oscar noms for two Scorsese movies (Killers is their fourth collaboration). The filmmaker calls Prieto,...

Exclusive: Gael García Bernal will be honored with the inaugural Premio Vida y Legado (Life and Legacy Award) at the annual Día de Muertos celebration to be held on November 1 at the Hollywood Forever Cemetary in Los Angeles.

Now in its third year, the event is a tribute to Latino culture and the Mexican tradition of honoring family who have passed and bringing together family who are chosen.

“I’m honored to present the inaugural Día de Muertos Award to Gael García Bernal, a true cinematic icon whose brilliant work as both a producer and actor has brought Latino stories to life and given them a space in mainstream culture,” Carlos Eric Lopez, the Mexican-American fine art and celebrity photographer who hosts the yearly dinner, told Deadline in a statement.

Día de Muertos celebration in 2022 with guests that included Diego Boneta, Miguel, Xochitl Gomez and Jessica Alba.

Killers of the Flower Moon, All of Us Strangers and Black Flies will be part of the main competition at this year’s EnergaCamerimage international cinematography film festival.

Martin Scorsese’s 1920s-set Killers, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, tracks suspicious murders of members of the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world after oil was discovered underneath their land. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who will introduce the film at the Polish festival, previously won Camerimage’s main competition Golden Frog for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Amores Perros and Silver Frog for Oliver Stone’s Alexander.

Starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, shot by Dp Jamie Ramsey, who will also introduce the film, is inspired by Taichi Yamada’s novel Strangers. A year ago, Ramsay was awarded Camerimage’s Bronze Frog for his work on Oliver Hermanus’ Living.

EnergaCamerimage, the cinematography-focused film festival set for Torun, Poland, for Nov. 11-18, has announced that high-profile award contenders “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Black Flies” and “All of Us Strangers” will be featured in its main competition.

“Killers of the Flower Moon,” the latest pic from director Martin Scorsese, takes audiences on a journey through 1920s Oklahoma to tell a heartbreaking tale of love, greed and betrayal. Based on a true story and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, it centers on the suspicious murders of members of native American tribe Osage Nation, who became wealthy overnight after oil was discovered beneath their land.

This is the eighth Camerimage main competition nomination for Scorsese’s cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto. He previously won the fest’s Golden Frog for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Amores Perros” (2000) and Silver Frog for Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” (2004).

“Black Flies,” a suspenseful story directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire,...

Mexico’s Mónica Lozano, producer of Alejandro González Iñarritu’s “Amores Perros” and Eugenio Derbéz’s “Instructions Not Included,” has boarded “Cepeda,” an envelope-pushing Mexico-set procedural, turning on a Mexican cop who’s an Indigenous woman and great at her job.

Development over the last two years has been financed by Acuña’s Chile-based Promocine. Put back, however, by the pandemic, the project is now set up at Lozano’s Mexico City production house Alebrije Producciones, one of Mexico’s most active forces in international production, behind Carlos Carrera’s Quirino Award winner “Ana y Bruno” and Fox’s “Run Coyote Run.”

“Cepeda” is written by Chile’s Julio Rojas, who has shot to global fame as creator of Podcast phenom “Caso 63.” Rojas also served as story editor on Lucía Puenzo’s “La Jauría,” and writer on Pablo Fendrik’s “El Refugio” and Matías Bize’s “The Life of Fish,...

Alicia Moncholí, winner of the New Directors of Asturias Award for her latest short, “Campolivar,” is developing her first feature film, the coming-of-age drama “Weekends,” just announced as one of the five titles in development set to be presented at the Second Spanish Screenings on Tour.

They unspool at Rome’s Mia forum, which takes place Oct. 9-13.

“Weekends,” like “Campolivar,” is set up at Barcelona-based Oberón Media, launched in 2018 by Antonio Chavarrías, producer of Berlin Golden Bear winner “The Milk of Sorrow” and director of “The Chosen,” and Mexico’s Mónica Lozano, producer of Alejandro González Iñarritu’s “Amores Perros” and Eugenio Derbéz’s “Instructions Not Included.”

Selected at the 9th edition of Dama Ayuda, where Moncholí was tutored by Michel Gaztambide, “Weekends” was put through Spain’s Residencias de la Academia 2023 program and Acció Viver de Dones Visuals, a 7th-month development initiative.

Her future debut is also written by Moncholí,...

In the debut feature of Mexican filmmaker-siblings Mariana and Santiago Arriaga, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. Competing at the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti sidebar, the coming-of-age road movie “A Cielo Abierto” turns on two teen brothers who are bent on avenging the death of their father in a road accident. They are joined by their new stepsister who, unaware of their intentions at first, later becomes a willing accomplice. As they pause and deliberate on what to do with their prey, what follows helps the brothers come to terms with the deep pain of their loss.

Based on the first original screenplay by their Oscar-nominated father, Guillermo Arriaga, “A Cielo Abierto” (“Upon Open Sky”) takes place in the arid region of Northern Mexico, specifically in the Coahuila desert, where, as children, the siblings would go on many hunting trips with their father. “Much more than the films we’ve seen,...

Mexican novelist, screenwriter and occasional director Guillermo Arriaga made his name in the film realm penning multi-threaded dramas about the ripple effects of tragic incidents. “Amores Perros” and “Babel” stand out among them. Now the scribe’s cinematic legacy turns into a family affair with his children Mariana and Santiago Arriaga making their feature directorial debut via a searing coming-of-age road trip movie their father wrote.

But don’t expect the breezy sexiness of something like Alfonso Cuarón’s “Y Tu Mamá También.” Despite featuring adolescent protagonists, this journey into maturity holds major emotional stakes but few flutters of careless abandon. As is common in Arriaga’s scripts, the tale finds its potency in the intricate moral grays of the human condition, here portrayed through a collection of strikingly incisive performances by the young cast.

Set in early 1990s Mexico, “Upon Open Sky” begins on an empty desert highway. Twelve-year-old...

Even if professional wrestling may not be everyone’s cup of tea, numerous stories behind the sports entertainment phenomena are usually quite engaging. Darren Aronofsky has been able to give a heartbreaking look into the complex life using various real-life inspirations for his film, The Wrestler. We will also be getting an equally rough drama with the upcoming Von Erich biopic, The Iron Claw. Even a lighter, more inspiring film like Fighting with My Family can prove to be just as compelling. Prime Video has just released a trailer for a film that gives us a look at the Mexican legacy of pro wrestling, the Lucha Libre, with Cassandro. The film is a biopic of real-life luchador, Saúl Armendáriz.

The official synopsis from Prime Video reads,

“Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso, rises to international stardom after he creates the character ‘Cassandro,’ the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.

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Photo: Gael Garcia Bernal/Shutterstock

Mexican Cinema has been referred to as the Hollywood of Latin America many, many times. Rightfully so, quite a few actors have emerged from the Mexican film industry, making a smooth transition into the international world of Cinema. One of those actors is the widely known and extremely talented Gael Garcia Bernal.

Gael Garcia has been part of several Hollywood productions, often representing Latin, more specifically Mexican culture. His incredible talent has landed him roles with Hollywood's most prestigious networks and directors. His acting repertoire expands with over 60 credits.

Watch The Trailer of the Film and the Revolution: 'Can I Go Home Now?' The Children of Ukraine Continue to Ask | Official Trailer Launch Cannes 2023

Gael Garcia Bernal was born into a family of artists in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, Jalisco. At a very young age, Gael was introduced into the world of acting,...

Former Netflix exec Juan Mayne has hung his own shingle, Madrid-based N&l Films, which is bulwarked by strong talent relationships, a strategic alliance with Exile Content and a sure sense of market opportunities for Spain-based independent producers.

Exile Content and N&l Films have struck a first-look development deal. Jeff Glaser, who oversaw Netflix production finance in Mexico City and Madrid, has joined the company.

N&l’s first slate includes a Mexican remake of “Miracle in Cell No. 7,” co-produced by Rock & Ruz and Mexico’s Corazón Films, which will handle distribution in the country, and “Aristides: A Righteous Life,” the true-life account of a Portuguese diplomat who saved thousands from the Nazis in WWII, from Seanne Winslow.

N&l is also in conversations with with Lluis Quilez and Fernando Navarro – director and writer of Netflix Top 10 non-English movie “Below Zero” – to develop a true crime film based...

Happening director Audrey Diwan will head up this year’s jury for the Cannes Critics’ Week sidebar, organizers unveiled on Wednesday.

The French filmmaker won the Golden Lion in Venice for Happening, an abortion drama set in early 1960s France, which was her second feature. She will take over duties as jury president for the Critics’ Week, a parallel Cannes festival sidebar that focuses on first and second features from emerging talents.

Joining Diwan on this year’s Critics’ Week jury are German actor Franz Rogowski (A Hidden Life, Disco Boy), Portuguese cinematographer Rui Poças (Frankie, Tabu), Sundance festival programming director Kim Yutani, and Indian journalist and Berlinale festival programmer Meenakshi Shedde.

Originally set up by an association of French film critics in 1962, Critics’ Week is the oldest non-official Cannes sidebar. The section is credited with discovering some of the biggest names in independent and arthouse cinema, many of whom...

Mother’s Day is on the horizon, and it’s natural to celebrate those who give their all to their families. Mothers like Sarah Connor, Ripley, and Charlie Baltimore carry on the tradition of action heroines that are lionesses protecting their cubs from the threats of predators. Jennifer Lopez seeks to join the badass mothers with her new action thriller, The Mother. Netflix has just dropped the trailer showcasing Lopez’s new physical prowess to take down all comers threatening to hurt her daughter to get to her.

The official synopsis from Netflix reads,

A deadly female assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter that she gave up years before, while on the run from dangerous men.

The cast includes Lopez as the titular Mother. Lucy Paez, from films Silencio andThe Exorcism of Carmen Farias, plays Zoe, the Mother’s 12-year-old daughter. Omari Hardwick, known for Kick-Ass,...

“A Cielo Abierto,” the latest film from Oscar-nominated Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel”), is being brought onto Berlin’s European Film Market by Film Factory Entertainment.

Produced by Argentina’s K&s Films, whose credits include “Wild Tales,” “The Clan” and “The Summit” — the last by “Argentina, 1985” director Santiago Mitre — “A Cielo Abierto” is directed by Mariana Arriaga and Santiago Arriaga, Guillermo Arriaga’s daughter and son, making their feature film debut.

“A Cielo Abierto” turns on two teen brothers who take a road trip to the Mexico-u.S. border to track down the man responsible for the car accident that caused their father’s death.

Joined by their beautiful newly-met stepsister, their trip becomes a “tense revenge journey to adulthood,” the synopsis runs.

During the journey, the trio, from Mexico’s upper-middle class, will also encounter “violence, tenderness, a wild inclement landscape, instinct, animals and seriousness,” Guillermo Arriaga said.

“A...

Nine years ago, the director Alejandro González Iñárritu spent eight months in the Canadian wilderness with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. It was minus 40 degrees, the sort of cold that cuts to the bone; the sort of cold that makes it hard to open your eyes, as DiCaprio once described it. The Revenant, for which Iñárritu recieved one of the five Oscars to his name, is regularly mentioned in the same breath as Apocalypse Now when discussing the Toughest Film Shoots Ever. Compared to Bardo, False Chronicles of a Handful of Truths, Iñárritu’s latest film, it was a walk in the park.

What could be harder to make than The Revenant, a film that saw its star chow down on raw bison liver and multiple crew members exit due to conditions one source described as a “living hell”? “Bardo was 100 times tougher,” says Iñárritu over Zoom from his cosily...

The last time Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu released three new movies in the space of the same year was 2006. By then, their reputations at home had been established by early successes like Y tu mamá también (Cuarón), The Devil’s Backbone (del Toro) and Amores Perros (Iñárritu) and they had each worked in the U.S., with del Toro and Cuarón stepping into blockbuster cinema with Hellboy and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban respectively, and Iñárritu directing Sean Penn and Naomi Watts to Oscar nominations with 21 Grams.

When they donned tuxedos to celebrate the 79th Academy Awards together on February 25, 2007, “The Three Amigos,” as they’d been dubbed, might have considered the evening a high watermark in their respective careers. Iñárritu had been Best Director and Best Picture nominated for Babel; Del Toro had a nod for his Original Screenplay for Pan...

First appearance for Pakistan with Joyland.

The Academy has announced its shortlists for 10 Oscar categories in the 95th Academy Awards. Just under half of the 15 international feature film category contenders hail from outside Europe in a sign, sources said, of growing global membership and awareness.

Scroll down to see lists

Overall the international feature film shortlist comprises eight titles from Europe, four from Asia, two from Latin America, and one from Africa. There is a first appearance for Pakistan with Joyland, the film that was initially banned due to its trans content before the government reversed the measure and agreed...

In “On Exactitude in Science,” a 1946 short story from the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, a fictional 17th century chronicler describes a guild of cartographers who make ever-bigger maps until, eventually, they create a “Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.” As tastes change, later generations declare the map “Useless” and leave the great work to wither in the desert sun, where “Animals and Beggars” live within the map’s “Tattered Ruins.” The brief tale manages to probe the nature of inquiry and spoof the history of empire, quite a feat for a piece that’s only a paragraph long.

Watching the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu, the multi-Oscar-winning writer-director behind The Revenant, Birdman, and Babel, can feel like watching both Borges and the cartographers work at the same time. He’s a man who often seems to...

This review originally ran September 1, 2022, for the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Although seemingly fragmented in its structure, as dreams often play out in our subconscious, “Bardo (or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths),” the new fable from Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu premiering at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, reveals itself a circular narrative where the surreptitiously personal and the vehemently political become entangled to seismic effect.

Throughout the film’s warranted nearly-three-hour runtime, Iñárritu writes the cinematic verses of an oneiric love poem to an ever-incongruous homeland while simultaneously investigating his own perceived hubris, insecurities and fractured identity. On the other side of everything with which he grapples rests a transcendent masterpiece lucidly woven from honest contradictions, painful self-awareness, and hard-hitting historical observations.

Much like “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón’s own artistic pilgrimage back to his estranged origins, Iñárritu’s “Bardo” is an attempt at...

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Alejandro González Iñárritu — the guest on this week’s episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded in front of an audience of students at Chapman University — is a Mexican writer, director, producer, film editor and composer who was described by Roger Ebert as “unreasonably talented.” He has directed seven feature films over a period of 22 years: 2000’s Amores Perros, 2003’s 21 Grams, 2006’s Babel, 2010’s Biutiful, 2014’s Birdman, 2015’s The Revenant and 2022’s Bardo, the last four of which he also co-wrote.

He has personally won four Oscars — best picture, best director and best original screenplay for Birdman and, just a year later, best director for The Revenant, making him one of only three filmmakers who have ever won that high honor in back-to-back years, after John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. And he was also awarded an...

“There is nothing to understand, there’s a lot to feel,” declares Alejandro G. Iñárritu about his ambitious and deeply personal new film “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” For our recent webchat he adds, “If you want to understand, there’s nothing to understand, just shut up your mind and let yourself go, and go with the dream. When people do that, they use art to be transported. That’s how cinema started in the first place. Then narrative and storytelling was added to the equation, but it’s not necessarily the only possibility of cinema,” he explains. “This is not an autobiography. This is a fictionalized exercise, a very personal and intimate experience to get us into this labyrinthine way that our memory works,” he notes, adding that he “wanted to establish that this was a journey in the mental landscape of a character that is navigating between truth and fiction.

This interview with Alejandro G. Iñárritu first ran in two different parts in the Race Begins and International issues of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu would like to get this straight from the start: “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” is not an autobiography. Its lead character, played by Daniel Giménez Cacho, is Silverio Gama, a movie director who looks like Iñárritu and who moved from Mexico to Los Angeles early in his career, just like Iñárritu; he also has a family like Iñárritu’s and he and his wife lost a child, like Iñárritu. But “Bardo” is a fantasia, a dreamscape and, insisted the writer-director, anything but a factual accounting of his life.

“It has taken me a long time to make myself clear that this is not an autobiography,” he said. “For me, every autobiography is a lie. Autobiography pretends it owns the truth,...

The Screen Podcast is back for the 2022/2023 awards season.

The Screen Podcast is back for the 2022/2023 awards season. Over the coming weeks, the Screen International team will provide expert analysis of the race for Oscar and Bafta glory, and bring you interviews with many of the leading contenders.

The Screen International Podcast · Alejandro Iñárritu on ‘Bardo’ inspirations, re-editing after Venice premiere

In the first episode of the season, Alejandro González Iñárritu, a two-time best director Oscar winner for Birdman and The Revenant, talks to Screen contributing editor Mark Salisbury about his latest project, Mexican Oscar entry Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths.

Titles include ‘Not A Murder Story’ and ‘I Can See You Shine’.

Taiwan-based streaming platform Catchplay and its production subsidiary Screenworks Asia have unveiled a slate of Mandarin-language originals, led by crime thriller series Not A Murder Story.

The titles include regional collaborations involving co-production partners from Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore, with further notable projects including teen romance series I Can See You Shine and psychological thriller Love Is A Bitch from award-winning filmmaker Sung Hsin-Yin.

Announcing the slate at a press event in Taipei today marked the first in-person launch of Screenworks Asia, which was established in mid-...

Taiwan-based regional streamer Catchplay and its production subsidiary Screenworks Asia have announced a slate of Mandarin-language originals, headed by eight-part crime thriller Not A Murder Story, directed by Chen-Nien Ko (The Silent Forest) and starring Kuan-Ting Liu (A Sun).

Currently in post-production, the series is a co-production between Screenworks Asia, Taiwan’s Gala Television Corp and Hong Kong’s MakerVille Company. The story revolves around an aspiring actor who wakes up one morning with a dead woman beside him. Sonia Sui (Women Who Flirt) and Gingle Wang (Detention) also star.

Also in post-production is coming-of-age comedy drama I Can See You Shine, scripted by Xin-Xuan Huang (The Making Of An Ordinary Woman I & II). The story of two high school friends, one of whom is a second generation immigrant, aims to challenge stereotypes around immigrant families in Taiwan.

Screenworks Asia has also announced its first film production, psychological thriller Love Is A Bitch,...

“Amores Perros” and “Instructions Not Included” producer Monica Lozano is touting mambo and soccer projects at AFM, both of which will debut on Prime Video in November.

The soccer documentary about one of Mexico’s greatest players, “Hugo Sanchez, el Gol y la Gloria,” launches on Nov. 18 while “Mambo Dreams, el sueño de ayer” drops Nov. 30.

Described as the definitive chronicle of Mexico’s greatest athlete, “Hugo Sanchez” traces his early start as a university team player to his stellar time at Spain’s Real Madrid, and eventual fall from grace.

The Prime Video Original will launch worldwide on the streaming platform and will be available to linear TV and other outlets after a holdback, said Lozano.

“Hugo Sanchez” is directed and co-produced by Francisco Javier Padilla, best known for his career-launching feature debut, “Suave Patria, starring Karla Souza, Omar Chaparro and Hector Suarez. He’s currently developing docu series...

This story about the best international film schools first appeared in the College Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

Australian Film, Television And Radio School

Sydney, Australia

“Aftrs was perfect because it was…practical,” says songwriter Christine Kirkwood, who graduated from Australia’s national screen and broadcast school after a six-month government program to train women in filmmaking. Her fellow alums include Gillian Armstrong and Phillip Noyce, who were in the school’s first graduating class in 1973, as well as Jane Campion, Cate Shortland and cinematographer Andrew Lesnie. Located near the Fox Studios in Sydney, the campus includes studios, post-production facilities and an extensive library.

Aftrs has a robust First Nations and Outreach program for indigenous students, and in early 2023 a new partnership with Industrial Light & Magic will allow the school to begin offering a two-semester Graduate Diploma in Visual Effects program. Other new offerings include a Screen Warriors program that will recruit,...

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Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu is no stranger to the Tokyo International Film Festival. He first visited the city with his debut feature film, Amores Perros (2000), and went on to win the festival’s prizes for both best director and best film. In 2006, he was back in the Japanese capital to shoot major portions of his globe-spanning, Oscar-nominated drama Babel, living with his entire family for four months in the city. Later, he returned to serve as president of 2009 Tokyo festival jury.

This year, Iñárritu is arriving in Japan with dual duties. He will both screen his first feature in seven years (and his first fully Mexico movie since Amores Perros) — the epic, phantasmagoric comedy drama Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths — and he will attend a glitzy gala at Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel to receive the festival’s Kurosawa Akira award for lifetime achievement.

The second trailer for Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s red-hot Oscar contender “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” just dropped. Netflix is releasing the film theatrically in Mexico on October 27, followed by the US, Spain and Argentina on November 4, and globally on November 18. The film will start streaming on Netflix on December 16.

This wide-screen epic is set in the 1980s and follows the journey of Silverio Gama, a ex-pat Mexican journalist and filmmaker living in L.A., back to his native country to collect an award. He is beset by both memories and fears as he makes his way home. Acclaimed Mexican actor Daniel Giménez Cacho is Silverio and Argentine’s leading lady Griselda Siciliani plays his wife. Iñárritu co-wrote the screenplay with his pal Nicolás Giacobone; they shared in an Oscar for scripting “Birdman” back in 2016.

That film, which won Best Picture, also brought Iñárritu the first of...

Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated actress Adriana Barraza (“Blue Beetle”) has joined Jean Reno in the family film “The Penguin and the Fisherman,” TheWrap has exclusively learned.

“The Penguin and the Fisherman,” directed by David Schurmann, and co-written by Kristen Lazarain & Paulina Lagudi Ulrich and cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle is based on the incredible true story of Joao Perei de Souza (Jean Reno), a Brazilian fisherman, who rescues a penguin (DinDim) covered in oil, near death and washed up on a remote island beach off of Brazil, far from his Patagonian home.

After DinDim returns to the wild, Joao is heartbroken — until a year later when DinDim returns. The story of their transcendent friendship and its impact on their little village is one for the ages.

Barraza joins Reno in the co-lead role playing Joao’s resolute wife Maria, who finds new love with her husband, through the spirit...

Alejandro González Iñárritu has bemoaned modern cinema’s prioritization of style over substance.

Taking to the stage in London for a wide-ranging discussion about his career, the two-time best director Oscar winner said: “I don’t care about the quality of things. When I see young filmmakers, I’m very connected to the way they express themselves. Nowadays, a lot of things look beautiful but there’s a lack of soul.”

The filmmaker expressed that audience expectations have shifted, too, saying he believes it is unlikely his “demanding” 2003 film “21 Grams” could be made today.

“I don’t know if we could have made that film today because audiences would be very irritated by it,” he said. “People need to be fed by the hand so much more.”

“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” is the director’s first film since his Leonardo DiCaprio-starring “The Revenant” in 2015. This feature,...

The strengths and possibilities of cinematic language were heavy on Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s mind as he sat down for a keynote ‘screen talk’ at the London Film Festival on Sunday afternoon.

The director is in London to screen his latest film Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. The keynote opened with Iñárritu offering a survey of his career, during which he highlighted the importance of rhythm and sound in how he crafts the visual grammar in his stories.

“Rhythm is god. I think that there is nothing that is without rhythm that can survive,” he said. “The rhythm of the blocking of a scene. The silence between the lines. That frequency is music in a way. It exists in every art expression. I think that’s the key to transmitting something that is profound.”

Moving onto the importance of sound in artmaking, Iñárritu — a former radio DJ...

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The Tokyo International Film Festival revealed Friday that Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu and Japan’s own Koji Fukada will both receive the Kurosawa Akira Award at the event’s upcoming 35th edition later this month. The Tokyo festival decided to revive the honor in 2022 after a 14-year hiatus. Presented to filmmakers “who are making extraordinary contributions to world cinema and are expected to help define the film industry’s future,” the prize was previously awarded to film luminaries such as Steven Spielberg, Yoji Yamada and Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien.

This year’s honorees were chosen by a selection committee including director Yoji Yamada, acclaimed actor Tatsuya Nakadai, veteran actress Mieko Harada, film critic Saburo Kawamoto and Tokyo’s programming director Shozo Ichiyama.

The committee said it chose to award this year’s prize to Iñárritu, “as his debut film...

Despite its polarizing response at its debut at the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, there is still a path open to the Oscars for Aljeandro G. Iñárritu’s sweeping memoir film “Bardo,” also known as “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” The Spanish-language film, shot in Mexico, is now the official Mexican selection for the International Feature Oscar.

Iñárritu has had great success with the academy before, winning Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay for 2015’s “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” and Best Director for 2016’s “The Revenant” (the icy survival picture that also won Leonardo DiCaprio his Best Actor award). Iñárritu also received a Special Achievement Award in 2018 for his interactive project “Flesh and Sand.”

Two previous Iñárritu films, 2000’s “Amores Perros” and 2010’s “Biutiful” went on to become one of the five nominees for international feature, but ultimately did not win the prize.