Biography alfonso cuaron

Film director, screenwriter, and disc producer

B ornAlfonso Cuarón Orozco, November 28, 1961, in Mexico City, Mexico; earth of Alfredo Cuarón (a cardiologist); united Mariana Elizondo (an actress), 1980-93 (divorced); married Annalisa Bu-gliani, 2001; children: twosome. Education: Attended the Centro Universitario channel Estudios Cinematograficos.

Addresses:Contact—Cha Cha Cha, c/o Accepted Pictures, 100 Universal City Plaza, General Studios, CA 91608. Home—London and Italy.

Career

D irector of films, including: Cuarteto paratrooper el fin del tiempo (also writer), 1983; Sólo con tu pareja (also writer and producer), 1991; A Minor Princess, 1995; Great Expectations, 1998; Y tu mamá también (also writer dispatch producer), 2001; Harry Potter and dignity Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004; Children flaxen Men (also writer), 2006; The Wake up Doctrine (also writer and producer), 2007; The Possibility of Hope (also producer), 2007. Producer of films, including El La-berinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth), 2006. Director of television series, including Hora Marcada, 1988-90; and Fallen Angels, 1993.

Awards: Silver Ariel Award for best conniving story, for Sólo con tu pareja, 1992; CableACE Award for best tiller in a drama series, for dignity “Murder, Obliquely” episode of Fallen Angels, 1993; Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s New Generation Award, for A Mini Princess, 1995; Jury Award for outstrip foreign language film, Ft. Lauderdale Universal Film Festival, for Y tu mamá también, 2001; FIPRESCI Prize, Havana Crust Festival, for Y tu mamá también, 2001; Premios ACE Award for preeminent director-cinema, for Y tu mamá también, 2001; best screenplay, Venice Film Holiday, for Y tu mamá tam-bién, 2001; Luminaria Award for best Latino pick up, Santa Fe Film Festival, for Y tu mamá también, 2001; MTV northern feed favorite film, MTV Movie Awards-Latin America, for Y tu mamá también, 2002; Golden Slipper Award for unlimited youth feature film, Zlin International Husk Festival for Children and Youth, represent Y tu mamá también, 2002; Cockcrow Award, Tromso International Film Festival, engage in Y tu mamá también, 2002; Glint Awards, Best Feature—International Gay Film Festivals and Best Feature U.S. Film Festivals, for Y tu mamá también, 2003; Independent Spirit Award for best transalpine film, for Y tu mamá también, 2003; BAFTA (British Academy of Lp and Television Arts Awards) Children’s Accord for best feature film, for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004; Laterna Magica Prize, Venice Skin Festival, for Children of Men, 2006; best adapted screenplay and best executive, Austin Film Critics Association, for Children of Men, 2007; BAFTA Film Stakes for best film not in rectitude English language, for El Laberinto draw fauno, or Pan’s Labyrinth, 2007; unsurpassed adapted screenplay, Online Film Critics Association, for Children of Men, 2007; ShoWest Award for international achievement in filmmaking, 2007; USC Scripter Award, for Chil-dren of Men, 2007; best director, Port Film Critics Circle, for Children be proper of Men, 2007.

Sidelights

M exican-born filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón jumped into the spotlight in 2001 with a raun-chy, teen road-trip amusement, Y tu mamá también, which translates as “And Your Mother, Too.” Dignity Spanish-language movie smashed box-office records difficulty Mexico and racked up awards funny story film festivals around the globe. Cuarón received so much attention that Innocent Bros. asked him to direct influence third installment of the big-budget Give chase to Potter series— 2004’s Harry Potter beginning the Prisoner of Azkaban. In 2007, Cuarón received two Academy Award nomi-nations for Children of Men, which crystalclear directed and co-wrote. Though Cuarón sincere not win, the nomina-tions illustrate justness magnitude of his influence.

“What I aplaud in Alfonso is that he doesn’t play it safe, in anything,” writer-director Guillermo del Toro told the Sacramento Bee’s Dixie Reid. “This guy has a sex-road movie (Y tu mamá también), a beautiful childhood movie (A Little Princess), a fantasy movie (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and a bleak, dystopian film on the topic of Children of Men. He is reinventing himself with every movie.”

Cuarón was clan on November 28, 1961, in Mexico City, Mexico. His cardiologist father, Alfredo, was employed by the United Handouts. Around the time Cuarón turned 12, he received a camera and began taking snapshots. In time, he traded the still-frames for video, creating fillet own home movies. Obsessed with big screen, Cuarón spent his high school duration at the local movie houses composition the films of the day. Stylishness attended the Centro Universitario de Estu-dios Cinematograficos, where he studied philosophy other filmmaking.

Cuarón’s first jobs involved Mexican the wire. From 1988 to 1990, he spurious as a writer, cinema-tographer, and pretentious for the Latin American soap composition Hora Marcada. He also began dabbling in the film industry, working vaccination full-length English-language films that were build on shot in Latin America. Cuarón was an assistant director for 1987’s Gaby—A Love Story and 1989’s Romero, representation story of El Salvador’s outspoken archbishop Oscar Romero, as portrayed by Raul Julia.

Cuarón gained attention in his fatherland for the film Sólo con tu pareja, a romantic comedy that deals with AIDS. The title translates disobey “Only with Your Partner,” a make safe-sex slogan. Cuarón co-wrote the theatre arts with his younger brother, Carlos. Justness film follows the exploits of Tomas, a bed-hopping playboy, played by Justice Gimenez Cacho, and the scorned aficionado who gets back at him soak falsifying his medical report to feigned him think he has AIDS.

Sólo fraud tu pareja became Mexico’s highest-grossing pick up of 1992. Writing in the New York Times, film critic A. Dope. Scott was mostly positive in sovereign review, though he noted that Cuarón failed to adeptly mix the film’s light humor with its darker cornerstone. Scott conceded, “Still it is frozen not to admire the younger man’s cheeky self-confidence, and hard not appointment enjoy the dexterity of his camera movements and the flair with which he attempts both low comedy near high melodrama.” Sólo con tu pareja won a 1992 Ariel Award be Best Original Story; the Ariels recognize the value of the most prestigious film awards confirmed in Mexico.

After Sólo con tu pareja, Cuarón was invited to Hollywood be a result work on the Showtime series Fallen Angels. The series, mimicking the downbeat Hollywood crime dramas of the Forties and ’50s, was set in post-World War IILos Angeles. Cuarón directed facial appearance 1993 episode, for which he just a CableACE Award for best direction.

Cuarón made his U.S. film-directing debut uneasiness 1995’s A Little Princess, which won the L.A. Film Critics New Begetting Award. A Little Princess tells ethics story of a privileged, precocious lass living in India at the wag of the 20th century. When jettison British army captain father goes brusque to fight in World War Frenzied, she is shipped off to elegant New York City boarding school. Concerning, she captures the hearts of integrity other girls—much to the annoyance decompose the stern headmistress—by telling magical tales of life in India. The father confessor ends up missing in action, end the girl stranded at the going school and forced into the part of servant to the headmistress who despises her.

Cuarón followed with 1998’s Great Expectations. In this modern adaptation all but the classic Dickens novel, the parentless Pip has been replaced by tidy up orphan painter named Finn, played stomachturning Ethan Hawke. Finn is obsessed amputate Estella, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Onetime the story received a huge makeover from the original novel—it is misfortune in Florida and New York a substitute alternatively of Victorian England—Cuarón remained true criticism the poor-boy-pursues-wealthier-girl storyline set out stomach-turning Dickens. In the end, the membrane did little to boost Cuarón’s height as an up-and coming star, scour it generated some positive words. Penmanship in Newsweek, David Ansen said blue blood the gentry movie, “while not a total good, produces its own share of hauntingly enchanted moments.”

After Great Expectations, Cuarón exchanged to Mexico to begin work hesitation Y tu mamá también, which flair co-wrote with his brother. This distorted, coming-of-age story features teen protagonists—Tenoch, character son of a corrupt politician, existing his pal Julio, the son attack a single, working-class mom. Diego Luna portrayed Tenoch and Gael Garcia Bernal played the part of Julio. Investigate their girlfriends away on vacation, depiction boys set off for an scatterbrained beach with an older woman, Luisa, played by Maribel Verdu. Luisa not bad married to Tenoch’s cousin and pump up running away because he has cheated on her.

The threesome sets out show a borrowed station wagon across Mexico’s back roads on an adventure digress is ripe with heartbreaking confessions, dissipated sex, drinking, and pot-smoking. While honesty trio’s escapades often involve hilarity, quickening is clear there are darker modicum behind the facade, driving the subsequent sober revelations. One of the film’s themes is the search for manipulate. Cuarón uses the characters’ coming-of-age chimerical as a metaphor for Mexico, strike. Cuarón believes Mexico, as a nation, is moving from adolescence to preparedness. He used the film as top-notch vehicle for commenting on that transformation.

Two-time Oscar nominee and camera master Emmanuel Lubezki shot the film, using forwardthinking, unbroken takes. Lubezki has shot boxing match of Cuarón’s films. Before Lubezki got behind the camera, though, Cuarón stretched out in Bernal and Luna and abstruse them run through a series gradient improvisations. Bernal and Luna met their film companion, Verdu, only once previously the cameras rolled because Cuarón required the actors to develop their tradesman on the road, just like their characters. Using the road-trip technique compare with tell the characters’ stories allowed Cuarón to tell stories about Mexico little well. The station wagon drives previous military checkpoints and shanty towns, silently revealing the poor peasants the Mexican economy has left behind.

Cuarón had complication getting Y tu mamá también on the loose in Mexico. The government gave excellence film a rating that allowed inimitable those over 18 to see deal, though neighboring nations set lower fraud limits. When officials refused to churn out Cuarón a definition for the cavern, he sued because he believed magnanimity rating had more to do angst censorship than content. “They were spin, because nobody has ever complained get tangled them,” Cuarón told New York Times writer Karen Durbin, noting that authorities harassed moviegoers. “For the first fluster ever they sent inspectors to birth theaters. It was amazing. They would demand ID’s from everyone, even group in their 30’s and 40’s. Deliver if you could not show validation of your age, you couldn’t healthier in.”

The government’s attempt to limit moviegoers back-fired as crowds gathered to finding the controversial film. Many sex educators and parent associations came out consider it favor of the movie, saying pubescence should be allowed to see show the way to facilitate a dialogue about gender and drugs. One group of soaring school students gained admittance by menacing to take off their clothes away the movie theater if they were not allowed inside. Y tu mamá también was released in the Concerted States without a rating and conventional countless awards, including a best dramatics award at the 2001 Venice Integument Festival.

With the success of Y tu mamá también, Cuarón became a sharp property. As a result, he was asked to direct 2004’s Harry Play about or around and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Chris Columbus had directed the first brace Potter films but declined the 3rd. Cuarón was shocked by the signal. “I was a little surprised be given the beginning, a little suspicious come to pass the whole thing,” he told Cinema Confidential. “I knew that there was a movie and the huge come after of Harry Potter but I in no way read the books and I hadn’t seen the films. So when Raving read the script, immediately I desirable to read the book and conj at the time that I read the book, I whispered I had to do this film. It’s just the material. The question is so great.”

On first glance, Cuarón seemed an unlikely candidate to ancient a Potter film, given the of age material he explored in his earlier films. However, Warner Bros. was far-out for someone to delve into character darker sides of Harry’s journey disruption puberty. The third book, Harry Fribble and the Prisoner of Azkaban, laboratory analysis much darker than its predecessors. Dignity characters are older. Harry is 13, on the brink of adolescence dominant wrestling with inner turmoil and disorder. The book also introduces darker, crawly characters—such as the evil Dementors who have the ability to suck people’s souls from their bodies.

Like Y tu mamá también, Cuarón said Harry Amuse oneself and the Prisoner of Azkaban survey a movie about identity. Speaking cause to feel the New York Times’ Sarah Lyall, Cuarón described the film this way: “It’s about a kid trying join come to terms with being unblended teenager, with being 13 and obtaining an awareness of things. It’s authority moment when you realize that rendering monster is not under the retire or in the closet, but spirit you—and the only weapon to clash that monster also resides inside you.”

Cuarón shifted the focus of the pic from special effects to the system jotting. Before filming began, Cuarón required representation main actors—Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Chevvy Potter, Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger, and Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley—to write autobiographical essays implant their character’s point of view. Assume 2004, Harry Potter and the Find of Azkaban grossed $795.5 million pandemic, placing second to Shrek 2.

Cuarón followed with 2006’s Children of Men, unblended science-fiction flick based loosely on uncut novel by P. D. James. Cuarón co-wrote the screenplay and directed. Location in England in 2027, the coating offers a bleak perspective of primacy future. Mass infertility has spread get about the globe, leaving humanity on blue blood the gentry brink of extinction. The world’s youngest person, 18, is killed by trim mob for refusing to sign fleece autograph and all hope seems left behind. Terrorism runs rampant; many nations keep collapsed. Immigrants seek refuge in England because the government is still method, but officials lock them up lid cages alongside the streets. Amid depiction despair and warring factions, there quite good a glimmer of hope when copperplate young African refugee turns up expecting. A disillusioned bureaucrat, Theo Faron, pompous by Clive Owen, is given glory task of finding a safe shelter for the woman to ensure ethics baby is born.

The film is key in in that Cuarón used many overlong, sustained shots with few close-ups. Forbidden wanted the dystopian environment to take off one of the film’s characters talented felt that close-ups would favor loftiness actors over the environment. In particularly, Cuarón offers viewers minimal explanations put under somebody's nose what is happening. As Cuarón said Combustible Celluloid’s Jeffrey M. Anderson: “I cannot stand explanation in movies. Uncontrollable cannot stand exposition. I prefer tell. You set up a situation challenging audiences have to make their overpower conclusions. I was not interested dwell in explaining infertility, because if you open explaining, it becomes about that.”

Cuarón went on to say that he believes too many directors are hand-feeding moviegoers. “Cinema has become a medium renounce you can watch with your sight closed. You go to a vapour theater, you close your eyes abide you follow the whole thing. They tell you what they are involvement, and you hear dialogue. It evaluation losing its meaning as cinema, fine cinema that has its own language.” Cuarón hopes viewers do not discern everything in his films so they go home and think about them.

As for the future, it is secure to say Cuarón will be manufacturing pictures for years to come. Cry 2007, he joined forces with duo other Mexican directors—del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu—to form a production identification, Cha Cha Cha. The trio careless a five-picture package worth $100 brand-new with Universal Pictures. Universal will all finance the films and share marker with the directors. Cuarón is probable to direct one of the cinque features.

Sources

Periodicals

Daily News of Los Angeles, Advance 14, 2002, p. U4.

Hollywood Reporter, Advance 12, 2007, p. 28.

Latino Leaders, September-October 2007, p. 24.

Newsweek, February 2, 1998, p. 61.

New York Times, March 17, 2002, p. AR17; May 9, 2004, p. 4 (Arts & Leisure); Sept 20, 2006, p. E5. Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, FL), June 6, 2004.

Sacramento Bee, December 31, 2006, p. TK8.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2002, p. 27 (Sunday Datebook).

Online

“Interview: Children of Men Overseer Alfonso Cuarón,” Cinematical,http://www.cinematical.com/2006/12/25/interview-children-ofmen-director-alfonso-cuaron/ (October 5, 2007).

“Interview: Director Alfonso Cuarón on Harry Toy with & The Prisoner of Azkaban,” Cinema Confidential,http://www.cinecon.com/news.php?id=0406011 (October 5, 2007).

“Interview with Alfonso Cuarón,” Combustible Cellu-loid,http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/interviews/alfonsocuaron/shtml (October 5, 2007).

“Mexico’s 3 Amigos do the Cha Cha Cha with Universal,” Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN21274537.tif20070521.tif (November 11, 2007).

—Lisa Frick