The global screen: intercultural dialogue and community in the filmmaking of Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu

In the 1990s, three Mexican-born filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, began careers that would see them directing films in Mexico, the US, and Europe. The three filmmakers are known for incorporating a broad spectrum of genres and aesthetic traditions from world cinema into their own films. Despite their internationalism, scholars and critics have tended to emphasize their national identity, viewing their films as either intrinsically Mexican or not Mexican enough. I argue that their films reflect multiple national identities and address what it means to live in a global community constituted by a plurality of cultural perspectives. This dissertation reads these auteurs as constructing their films as sites of dialogue between different identities, enabling their work to appeal to global audiences. I also understand these filmmakers as being in conversation with each other through shared themes that articulate specific social scenarios while remaining broad enough to resonate with audiences around the world. Chapter 1 examines Cuarón’s Sólo con tu pareja (1991), del Toro’s Cronos (1993), and Iñárritu’s Amores perros (2000). I read the directors’ thematization of precarity, alienation, and abjection as resonating with audiences in Mexico and the US who experienced the jarring effects of neoliberalism. Chapter 2 discusses Cuarón’s A Little Princess (1995) and del Toro’s Mimic (1997), which I read as sharing a theme of dislocation that spoke to American, Indian, and Latin American societies that were being transformed at the end of the Cold War. Chapter 3 explores how del Toro, Cuarón, and Iñárritu responded to the post-9/11 political environment in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Children of Men (2006), and Babel (2006). Through their thematic concern with chaos and order, these films spoke to viewers overwhelmed by war, the torture and detainment of terrorist suspects, mass surveillance, harsh immigration policies, and the looming threat of terrorism itself.2024-11-14T00:00:00