Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Mexican release poster
Spanish	Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades
Directed by	Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Written by	Alejandro G. Iñárritu Nicolás Giacobone
Produced by	Alejandro G. Iñárritu Stacy Perskie Kaniss
Starring	Daniel Giménez Cacho Griselda Siciliani
Cinematography	Darius Khondji
Edited by	Alejandro G. Iñárritu Mónica Salazar[a]
Music by	Bryce Dessner Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Production companies	M Producciones Redrum
Distributed by	Netflix
Release dates	September 1, 2022 (2022-09-01) (Venice) October 27, 2022 (2022-10-27) (Mexico)
Running time	174 minutes (Venice cut) 159 minutes (Final cut)
Country	Mexico
Languages	Spanish English
Box office	$43,116[1]

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Spanish:Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades), or simplyBardo, is a 2022 Mexicanepicpsychologicalblack comedy-drama film co-written, co-scored, co-edited, produced, and directed byAlejandro G. Iñárritu.^[2] The film starsDaniel Giménez Cacho alongsideGriselda Siciliani, and follows a journalist/documentarian who returns to his native country of Mexico and begins having an existential crisis in the form of dreamlike visions. The title refers to the Buddhist concept of thebardo, a liminal state between death and rebirth.^[3] It is Iñárritu's first film to be fully filmed in Mexico sinceAmores perros in 2000.

Bardo premiered on September 1, 2022 at the79th Venice International Film Festival in competition for theGolden Lion. It was released in theaters on November 18, 2022, then streamed onNetflix on December 16, 2022. The film received polarized reviews from critics, who praised the performances, cinematography, and direction, but were divided on its writing and runtime. It was selected as the Mexican entry for theBest International Feature Film at the95th Academy Awards, making the shortlist of fifteen films, but was not nominated. It received anAcademy Award nomination forBest Cinematography.

Silverio Gama is a Mexican journalist turned documentary filmmaker living inLos Angeles with his wife, Lucía, and teenage son, Lorenzo. His work has become increasingly personal and subjective as he has grown older; his latest film,False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, is a work ofdocufiction with autobiographical elements. Silverio and Lucía are happy together, but they are haunted by the death of their first son, Mateo, a day after his birth. The two keep Mateo's ashes and feel unable to move on from his loss. Silverio experiences much of his day-to-day life in surreal fashion, with dreams, memories, and fantasies playing out alongside his activities. When he meets the US ambassador to Mexico atChapultepec Castle, for instance, he envisions the events of the 1847Battle of Chapultepec and thesuicides of theNiños Héroes around him.

Silverio learns that he will be the first Latin American to receive a prestigious American award for journalism. He speculates that he is only receiving the award to ease tensions between the United States and Mexico (inflamed by negative perceptions ofU.S.–Mexico migration as well asAmazon's attempts to purchase the Mexican state ofBaja California), but nevertheless tries to deal with a wave of media scrutiny in his home country. He cancels an interview on a popular talk show at the last minute, reminisces about his time as a husband and father, and tries to strike a balance between attacking the problems he sees with the Mexican state and defending its people from stereotypes. Secretly, he feels guilty over emigrating to the U.S. when so many other Mexicans cannot leave.

Silverio and his family attend a party held in his honor. He reunites with his siblings and extended family, to whom he is indifferent, and his adult daughter, Camila, whom he lavishes with attention. When the talk show host scathingly criticizes Silverio's work, the filmmaker responds by insulting the host personally. Silverio eventually flees into the restroom, where he imagines reconciliations with his deceased father and mother. When he leaves his mother's apartment, he sees symbolic representations of historic atrocities in Mexico: hundreds of people signifying those kidnapped or killed by organized crime collapse in a commercial district, andHernán Cortés sits atop a pile of corpses in theZócalo, lecturing Silverio about the indigenous genocide.

Before travelling back to Los Angeles, Silverio and his family vacation in Baja California, just as Amazon buys the state. Camila tells Silverio that she will quit her job in Boston to move back to Mexico, which Silverio tentatively welcomes. The family decide to scatter Mateo's ashes in the ocean before leaving for the U.S., where they are treated with contempt by a Hispanic-American customs official.

After Lorenzo reminds him of a time when his petaxolotls died, Silverio buys some as a surprise gift. On theL.A. Metro ride from the pet store (in a repeat of an earlier scene), Silverio has a violentstroke and is left unattended on the train for several hours. He languishes in a coma, and it is revealed that the events of the film so far have been his comatose brain's attempts to process his life experience. Camila accepts the award in Silverio's absence, and she and his other family members and friends sit by his bedside, holding conversations and playing songs or television broadcasts that have inadvertently affected his dreams.

In a near-featureless desert within his mind, Silverio reunites with his dead family members and ignores projections of his living family. He sees a copy of himself, which mirrors his movements for a short time before walking away. The film ends as it began, with Silverio imagining himself flying through the desert. It is unclear if he has died, reawakened, or learned to live with his baggage.

• Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gama
  • Diego Tello de Meneses as 11-year-old Silverio
• Griselda Siciliani as Lucía Gama
• Ximena Lamadrid as Camila Gama
• Iker Sanchez Solano as Lorenzo Gama
• Jay O. Sanders as Ambassador Jones
• Andrés Almeida as Martín
• Francisco Rubio as Luis
• Rubén Zamora as Silverio's brother
• Mar Carrera as Lucero
• Fabiola Guajardo as Tania
• Daniel Damuzi as Antonio
• José Antonio Toledano as Juan Escutia
• María Cobar as Niece
• Fernanda Borches as Presenter
• Iván Massagué asHernán Cortés
• Luz Jiménez as Silverio Gama’s mother
• Luis Gnecco as Secretary of government
• Grantham Coleman as CNN reporter

On March 22, 2020, it was reported thatAlejandro G. Iñárritu would write, direct and produce a new film, to be shot in Mexico,Bradford Young as cinematographer, andPatrice Vermette as production designer.^[4] On March 9, 2021,Griselda Siciliani joined the cast,^[5] withGrantham Coleman that July.^[6]

Principal photography began on March 3, 2021, in Mexico City, withDarius Khondji as cinematographer andEugenio Caballero as production designer, under the working titleLimbo.^[7] Khondji paired the large format Alexa 65 camera with Panavision Sphero lenses, shooting almost the entirety of the film on the 17mm and the 21mm.^[8] Five months of filming were planned in other locations in the Capital and theEstudios Churubusco.^[9][10][11]

On March 4, 2021, during filming in thehistoric center of Mexico City, a passerby was arrested for striking a production security member.^[12] In September 2021, it was reported that the film had completed production.^[2]

Iñárritu continued editing the film after its premiere atVenice. The version screened atSan Sebastián, in late September 2022, had a running time of 152 minutes, without credits, 22 minutes shorter than the one screened at Venice andTelluride.^[13] The final runtime released byNetflix was set at 160 minutes including the credits.^[14]

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths had its world premiere at the79th Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2022,^[15] it was screened for the first time in the US at the49th Telluride Film Festival. The film was also screened at the70th San Sebastián International Film Festival, in late September, and at the 2022AFI Fest, in late November.^[16]

It was released in theaters in Mexico on October 27, 2022, then a limited release in United States theatres on November 4 and on Netflix on December 16.^[17][18][19]

The film has received polarized reviews from critics, who praised the performances of Giménez Cacho and Siciliani, Khondji's cinematography, and Iñarritu's direction, but criticized the runtime and writing; many referred to the film as "self-indulgent" and "pretentious". On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 60% of 167 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "As deeply personal as it is demanding,Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths unsteadily walks the line between brilliance and sheer self-indulgence."^[20]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 55 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[21]

In an interview withLos Angeles Times, Iñárritu believed there was a racial bias among the critics and stated that a filmmaker's expressions of themselves shouldn't be considered as self-indulgent or emulating other thematically related works.^[22]

FilmmakerLulu Wang praised the film, calling it "an exuberant film from a world-class artist who forges dreams (and nightmares) in lights and then dares to share it with the world."^[23]

• List of submissions to the 95th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film
• List of Mexican submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film

• Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths onNetflix
• Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths atIMDb 

• 2022 films
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• Films directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
• Films scored by Bryce Dessner
• Films set in Los Angeles
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• Magical realism films
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