Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro Iñárritu say traditional cinema isn’t over despite streaming services’ popularity

Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu are three of the most influential directors of Latin America and Hollywood. Their stories have captivated audiences for years, and now, the “three amigos” have shared with Deadline what they think is the future of cinema.

“We came from a generation that was completely lost in Mexican cinema—a generation of directors that had to battle a lot of adversity. The people that came after us are doing great, inventive and beautiful things,” del Toro, who just won a 2023 Golden Globe, told the publication.

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“We feel that even though we’re making movies in America, we carry with us a lot of our roots by producing in Mexico or by looking at work that’s being done here and helping to boost it.”

“We belong to a limbo—a bardo—that came out of seeking to weigh into an industry that was not natural to us. That we have in common. That’s important to say because when we talk to an American filmmaker that feels they belong completely, we realize we are still doing things that are oddities,” he added.

Although Cuarón, del Toro, and Iñárritu have films on streaming platforms, they shared the difficulty of not labeling their projects as “content.”

“That word, ‘content,’ has become so difficult not to use, but also, the unfortunate part is that a lot of the stuff being made is content,” Cuarón said. “It’s ordered as content. That’s some of it. The mistake is to pile on the amazing stuff that is being made in the context of the [streaming] platforms and call all of it ‘content.”

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According to del Toro, despite what many people think, traditional cinema is not over. “I think the cinema we’re getting now is post-Covid, post-Trump, post-truth cinema, and it’s very apocalyptic in a way,” he said. “There are big movements happening that are very interesting. And we won’t be able to fully see them until ten years from now, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss them. It’s a very interesting moment in cinema. A lot of it feels like end-of-day cinema, as people are not discussing it in that context.”

Cuarón said that he is “surprised by the way people discuss this thing of the end of cinema when you have so much amazing new cinema that is coming out, and so many great first-time directors are emerging. I find it to be the most amazing period.”