In 2006, Iñárritu became thefirst Mexican filmmaker to receive the Best Director Award at theCannes Film Festival. He became the first Mexican filmmaker to be nominated as director or producer in the history of the Academy Awards, as well as the first to win for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture. In 2019, Iñárritu served as the first Latin American president of the jury for the72nd Cannes Film Festival.
In 2015, Iñárritu was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director forBirdman (2014) and a year later received the same award forThe Revenant (2015), making him the third director to win the award back-to-back, following in the footsteps ofJohn Ford andJoseph L. Mankiewicz. To date, he is the only director in history to have won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directing two years in a row.
Iñárritu was later awarded a Special Achievement Academy Award for hisvirtual reality installationCarne y Arena (2017), the first ever VR installation to be presented at the Cannes Film Festival.
Iñárritu was born on 15 August 1963 inMexico City, the youngest of seven siblings, to Luz María Iñárritu and Héctor González Gama.[1][2][3] His maternal grandfather, Alfredo Iñárritu y Ramírez de Aguilar, was a prominent lawyer, judge, and justice of the Supreme Court of Mexico with partialBasque origins. The surnameIñárritu is of Basque origin.[4] Héctor was a banker who owned a ranch, but went bankrupt when Iñárritu was five.[3][5] A poor student, Iñárritu was expelled from high school at the age of 16 or 17 due to poor grades and misbehavior.[3][5][6] He briefly ran off with a girl from a wealthy family toAcapulco, having been influenced by theMiloš Forman filmHair, but returned to Mexico City after a week.[3][6]
Soon after, Iñárritu left home and worked as a sailor on cargo boats, taking two trips at the ages of 16 and 18, sailing through theMississippi River and then visiting Europe and Africa. With $1,000 supplied by his father, Iñárritu stayed in Europe for a year on the second trip.[7][8] Around this time, Iñárritu had the opportunity to watch thePalme d'Or-winning filmYol by world-famousKurdish directorYılmaz Güney.[9] Iñárritu was very impressed byYol and later said in interviews that this film was the reason he turned to cinema.[9] According to some Turkish journalists, the scene inThe Revenant (2015) whereLeonardo DiCaprio enters the belly of a dying horse was a reference to Yılmaz Güney and his filmYol, because there was a similar scene in that film.[10][11]
He has noted that these early travels as a young man have had a great influence on him as a filmmaker,[8] and the settings of his films have often been in the places he visited during this period.[6] After his travels, Iñárritu returned to Mexico City and majored incommunications atUniversidad Iberoamericana.[12]
Iñárritu began his career in 1984 as a radio host at the Mexican radio stationWFM, the country's most popular rock music station, where he "pieced together playlists into a loose narrative arc".[8][12] He worked with and interviewed artists like Robert Plant, David Gilmour, Elton John, Bob Geldof and Carlos Santana. He also wrote and broadcast small audio stories and storytelling promos. He later became the youngest producer forTelevisa, the largestmass media company inLatin America.[12] From 1987 to 1989, he composed music for six Mexican feature films. During this time, Iñárritu became acquainted with Mexican writerGuillermo Arriaga, beginning their screenwriting collaborations.[12] Iñárritu has stated that he believes music has had a bigger influence on him as an artist than film itself.[8] In the early 1990s, Iñárritu created Z Films, a production company, with Raúl Olvera in Mexico.[13] Under Z Films, he started writing, producing and directing short films and advertisements.[12] Making the final transition into TV and film directing, he studied under well-known theater directorLudwik Margules, as well as Judith Weston in Los Angeles.[14][15] In 1995, Iñárritu wrote and directed his first TV pilot for Z Films, calledDetrás del dinero, orBehind the Money, starringMiguel Bosé.[13]
After the success ofAmores Perros, Iñárritu and Arriaga revisited the intersected-stories structure ofAmores perros in Iñárritu's second feature film,21 Grams (2003).[12] The film starredBenicio del Toro,Naomi Watts andSean Penn. It was selected to compete for theGolden Lion at theVenice Film Festival, where Penn received theVolpi Cup for Best Actor.[20][21] At the76th Academy Awards, Del Toro and Watts received nominations for their performances.[22] From 2001 to 2011, Iñárritu directed severalshort films. In 2001, he directed an 11-minute film segment for11'09"01 September 11 - which is composed of several short films that explore the effects of the9/11 terrorist attacks from different points of view around the world.[12] In 2007, he madeANNA, part of Frenchanthology filmChacun son cinéma, which screened at the2007 Cannes Film Festival.Chacun son cinéma, a collection of 33 short films by 35 renowned film directors representing 25 countries, was produced for the 60th anniversary of the film festival.[23] In 2012, Iñárritu made the experimental short filmNaran Ja: One Act Orange Dance, inspired by L.A Dance Project's premiere performance, featuring excerpts from the new choreographyBenjamin Millepied crafted forMoving Parts. The story takes place in a secluded, dusty space and centers around LADP dancer Julia Eichten.[24]
In December 2013,Warner Bros. hired Iñárritu to direct a live-action adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's 1894 bookThe Jungle Book. Eventually,Andy Serkis directed the film titledMowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018).[47] In 2014, Iñárritu won three Academy Awards for directing, co-writing and co-producing Best Picture winnerBirdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), starringMichael Keaton,Edward Norton,Emma Stone,Naomi Watts,Zach Galifianakis, andAndrea Riseborough. The film is an existential dark comedy exploring the ego of a forgotten superhero actor, experienced as if filmed on a single shot. It was the first time a Mexican Filmmaker received Best Picture at the Academy Awards. He also won theGolden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, a DGA Award and a PGA Award for the film.[48][49] Iñárritu was also set to direct and produce the tv seriesOne Percent, an organic farming drama which he co-created withAlexander Dinelaris, Nicolas Giacobone, and Armando Bo forStarz.[50] Starz gave the show a straight-to-series order,[51] but dropped out in 2017 as the U.S. broadcaster of the series, with production companyMRC shopping the project to other networks or streaming platforms.[52][53]
In 2015, Iñárritu directedThe Revenant, initially adapted byMark L. Smith, before joined the writing process, based onMichael Punke's novelof the same name.[54][55] The film is a remake[56] of the filmMan in the Wilderness (1971) and starredLeonardo DiCaprio,Tom Hardy, andDomhnall Gleeson.[57] It is a "gritty" 19th-centuryperiod drama-thriller aboutfur trapperHugh Glass, a real person who joined theRocky Mountain Fur Company on a "journey into the wild" and was robbed and abandoned after being mauled by a grizzly bear.[55] The film considers the nature and stresses on relationships under the duress of the wilderness, and issues of revenge and pardon via Glass's pursuit of the man who was responsible for his hardship.[54][58]The Revenant took nine months to shoot.[59] WithThe Revenant being a critical and commercial success, Iñárritu won a second consecutive Oscar for Best Director[60] and was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, winning Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Actor.[61][62] Iñárritu is one of only three directors to ever win consecutive Oscars, and the first to do it in 65 years. He was also nominated for fourGolden Globe Awards, winning three, including Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director;[63] received nineCritics' Choice Movie Awards nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director;[64] five BAFTAs including Best Picture and Best Director; and a DGA Award, making history as the first person to ever win two in a row.
Iñárritu at the Cannes Film Festival 2019
The One Percent, originally planned as an upcoming American television drama series created and written by Iñárritu,Alexander Dinelaris Jr.,Nicolás Giacobone andArmando Bó, was eventually postponed on early March 2017 due to Alejandro feeling burnt out after the production ofThe Revenant. The quartet, who also collaborated onBirdman, were to serve as executive producers. Iñárritu was set to direct the first two episodes and set the visual style of the show.[65] Iñárritu'svirtual reality projectCarne y Arena was the first ever VR installation presented at theCannes Film Festival in 2017. Carne y Arena was also presented, at LACMA, Washington, D.C., and featured at thePrada Foundation inMilan.[66][67] Additionally,Carne y Arena was awarded the firstSpecial Achievement Academy Award in over 20 years at the Academy's 9th Annual Governors Awards.[68]
Iñárritu co-wrote, co-produced and directed the 2022 Spanish-language filmBardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, starringDaniel Giménez Cacho andGriselda Siciliani. It is his first film made in Mexico sinceAmores Perros (2000).[69] It premiered at the79th Venice International Film Festival, where it competed for theGolden Lion and was later distributed byNetflix.Bardo polarized critics and received mixed reviews.[70][71] Film critic Wendy Ide ofThe Guardian called the film "occasionally brilliant" and "audacious, bold film-making" but "cluttered with symbolism and bloated with self-regard".[72] Iñárritu described the response from critics as being "racist" saying, "You can like it or not — that's not the discussion. But for me, there's a kind of racist undercurrent where because I'm Mexican, I'm pretentious".[73] It earned a nomination for theAcademy Award for Best Cinematography at the95th Academy Awards.[74]
In 2009, Iñárritu, along with several filmmakers and actors, signed a petition in support of directorRoman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival following his arrest in relation to his 1977sexual abuse charges, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects."[79][80][81]
Directed Academy Award performances Under Iñárritu's direction, these actors have received theAcademy Award nominations and wins for their performances in their respective roles.
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