I'm a filmmaker from Mexico. But I also belong to the world.

Below the photo Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron writes about the "Three Amigos" connection with Mexican Cinema and how it defines their roots but not their vision. Link from Movie City News.


This year's Oscars are being seen as a high point for Mexican cinema. My latest film, Children of Men, has three nominations, which is obviously great. But Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel has seven and Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (which I helped produce) has six. That's just amazing.

Fortunately the three of us are good friends. We developed our films at the same time and we have always loved to collaborate, to stick our forks in each other's salad. So I feel as close to Alejandro and Guillermo's films as I do to my own. The three of us don't compete, we complement. We're family. You wish your brother would win a big award, just as your brother wishes the same for you.

So if nothing else the Oscars are an amazing excuse for a celebration, the perfect opportunity to hang out with my friends. What I resent, however, is the notion that the Oscars are somehow bestowing legitimacy on Mexican cinema. We don't need this legitimacy. Babel is a great film right now. Pan's Labyrinth is already great. Plus we all know that great films are always being snubbed at the Oscars. That doesn't make them any less great.

It is also dangerous to view us as somehow "representing Mexican cinema". Of course Alejandro, Guillermo and I are rooted in Mexico. But we are also a part of everything else as well. Children of Men is set in London, Pan's Labyrinth in Spain, while Alejandro shot Babel in a variety of languages and in locations ranging from Japan to California to Morocco. On the one hand these can be viewed as Mexican pictures; on the other, they are films that defy the usual nationalistic criteria.

Some years ago I left Hollywood to make a small Mexican film called Y tu mamá también. It was my way of reorienting my compass, of reconnecting to what I had always loved about cinema. And this was entirely the right thing to do. One way or another, it's important for film-makers to go back to their roots.

Having said that, my hope for the future is for people to start cutting loose from those geographic roots, to begin moving towards a state of freedom, of rootlessness. I feel this is what someone like Alejandro has already done. By shooting in Morocco and Japan, you could say that he was leaving his roots and finding his identity.

I have a huge appreciation of backgrounds. What I have a problem with is borders. The language of cinema is cinema itself: it doesn't matter whether it is filmed in Spanish or English or French or Japanese. The same goes for the people who make it. Yes, I'm a film-maker from Mexico. But I also belong to the world.