Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: I know about US culture. They don't know a damn thing about Mexican culture'

Alejandro González Iñárritu, a Mexican director with five Academy Awards, joined the Colegio Nacional de México as its 38th member and the first filmmaker invited to join the honorary academy. He described cinema as an art that has served multiple purposes, including government ideologies and repression, as well as poetry, inspiration, and entertainment. He called cinema a human mirror that reflects virtues and faults and is necessary. He criticized U.S. cinema for portraying Mexico with profound ignorance, creating stereotypes such as Mexicans wearing sombreros, being drunks, or being drug traffickers. He said these portrayals harm Americans themselves by shaping perceptions that ignore real historical and modern life in Mexico.

"With five Academy Awards to his name, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 62, had few things left to achieve, and this week he crossed one off. The award-winning Mexican director, who will release his ninth film this fall the dramedy Digger, starring Tom Cruise has returned to his native city to join the Colegio Nacional de Mexico, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the Spanish-speaking world. As its new 38th member and the first filmmaker ever asked to join the honorary academy, his entire craft is also entering the institution: an art that has historically played different roles, he says, from its use by governments for ideologies and repression to poetry and inspiration, and also entertainment."

"It is a human mirror with all our virtues and faults, but it is necessary, summarizes the director of Amores perros (2000), Birdman (2014) and Bardo (2022), who spoke with EL PAIS a day after his emotional speech. Question. Yesterday you said that the power of U.S. cinema, its self-sufficiency, had made it provincial. How is Mexico portrayed in films there? Answer. With profound ignorance. The way many iconic American films portrayed, for example, Native Americans or Mexicans they have created stereotypes of so many nationalities through an absolutely childish or ignorant idea has been tremendously to the detriment of Americans themselves as well."

"Because they have generated a perception that Mexicans wear sombreros, are drunks, are drug traffickers Q. Still today? A. Still. Just look at the ratings of the films that are produced and consumed. Daniela Michel who is a friend of mine and a great film lover told me that she gives many talks at MoMA and presents a lot of Mexican cinema, and that when she presented Crepusculo by Julio Bracho in New York (a modern urban Mexican film from the 1940s), Americans said: Wait, were there buildings and cars in Mexico in 1940? In other words, they can't believe the Torre Latinoamericana existed... They just can't understand"

Read at english.elpais.com