Alejandro González Iñárritu

Director

1963-08-15

Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican filmmaker known for films including Amores perros, Birdman, and The Revenant. He has won multiple Academy Awards for directing and producing. His work is recognized for formal experimentation and emotional intensity.

Quotes by Alejandro González Iñárritu

My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility.
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As the camera, I try to subordinate every word to be truthful and honest to each character's context.
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The way America sees Mexico, if they have any sense of it, is like Taco Bell. Our countries are neighbors, and the only hard food to get in America is true Mexican. It's impossible to find, even in L.A. Why is that?
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'Ikiru' is existential but with a lot of tenderness.
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In 'A Confession,' Tolstoy found meaning that he could hold on to, and he lived for another 30 years.
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Films like 'Babel' can transcend the one point-of-view formula that has reigned for so long.
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On a transcendental level, a film is not going to be better or worse because there's a prize behind it. The work will be what it is, with or without a prize.
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My kid will come home from seeing the latest 'Transformers' movie, and I'll ask him, 'How was it?' 'Amazing!' 'What was it about?' 'I don't know, but it was amazing!'
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Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports.
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In my work I think what drives me is perfection. I'm a chronically unsatisfied guy.
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When you see things upside down, the ego can be extraordinarily funny; it's absurd. But it's tragic at the same time.
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Everybody is looking for validation, no matter who you are, and I think that's a need of the human condition - to look for affection or recognition or validation.
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When we are looking for validation, that will never satisfy us. When we are looking for affection, for love, a little bit of that will be enough to be complete.
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Now is a time where there are so many social networks, such need for validation... you don't have to be a star or a politician to want to have likes or dislikes. Now there is a disease of popularity in the whole society.
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In a world where irony reigns, where you have to separate, protect and laugh at anything that is honest or has an emotional charge, I bet for catharsis. I like to invest emotionally in things. And catharsis, when it touches the emotional vein, can open the doors of even those who protect themselves.
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The expected vertical line of Ikiru's narrative breaks when Kurosawa does a flash-forward in the middle of the film.
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You have kids studying master class visual arts who are pushed to make films that will be successful economically; that's what they focus on. So they work for corporate interest instead of artistic expression.
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I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai.
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'Biutiful' is a tough film. It doesn't make concessions to the vulgarity of light entertainment. It's not the kind of film that you see every day in the Cineplex. But as an artist, it's the thing that I needed to do.
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I personally think that you have to get lost to find something really worthwhile, at least sometimes.
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