On Saturday afternoon Alejandro G. Iñárritu opened the 20th edition of the Morelia International Film Festival in style with the gala performance of “Bardo”, his most recent film.
G. Iñárritu walked the red carpet and signed autographs from cheering spectators. Also on the carpet were the actors of the film, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Iker Sánchez Solano and Ximena Lamadrid.
“It’s a very special day … to make the premiere of this film so personal and important to me,” said G. Iñárritu at a press conference before his film’s debut in Mexico, after its premiere at the latest edition of the Venice Film Festival. “It’s also a very exciting, memorable and long-awaited moment, it’s an honor to be at this festival.”
At the conference, the director was accompanied by the director general of the Morelia festival, Daniela Michel, and by the president Alejandro Ramírez. Michel confessed that he “dreamed” of seeing the film by G. Iñárritu, she has been a friend of her for years.
“I was deeply impressed,” Michel told the conference. “I greatly celebrate your originality, your ferocity, your extraordinary narrative ability … your perfection in cinema.”
“Bardo” marks the return of G. Iñárritu to Mexico as a director after two decades of work in Hollywood in which he won five Oscars for films such as “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” (“Birdman or (The unexpected virtue ignorance) “) and” The Revenant “(” The revenant “), as well as his virtual reality project” Carne y Arena “.
In a similar way, the film tells the life of Silverio Gama, a journalist and documentary maker who emigrated to the United States who years later returns to Mexico with his family.
“Having a Mexican crew was something really extraordinary for me,” said G. Iñárritu of his experience of filming again in his homeland with a crew he highlighted for their “unconditionality” and passion for. advancement of the film.
“I also had to readjust myself and they had to readjust themselves, that readjustment was part of what I was experiencing for me, it was a meta (meta fiction) experience that suddenly the same theme of the film I was living while Silverio was living it, it was a mirror in a mirror, “he said.
But “Bardo” is also a tortuous journey through the recesses of the mind that questions reality, something that fascinates G. Iñárritu, whose 2000 debut film “Amores Perros” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Film.
“I started in ‘Amores Perros’ where I obviously captured and was interested in reality, today there is nothing that interests me less than reality, because reality I realized already at my age that it does not exist”, he stressed.
“This film allows me to go beyond that reality … and I think that art has very important foundations, art allows us to imagine the world that we do not have”, he concluded.
The Morelia International Film Festival will run until October 29 in the western state capital of Morelia with guests such as Olivia Harrison and Maribel Verdú.
