Alejandro González Iñárritu

Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican filmmaker, producer, director, writer, editor and film score composer. He is most well known for his recent films Babel, 21 Grams and Amores Perros. He also directed several short films and worked as a TV producer, radio DJ and TV commercial cameraman before breaking into the movie business. Iñárritu studied filmmaking in the United States and his last two films were made in Hollywood. He has been nominated for two Oscars (he was the first Mexican to ever receive an Oscar nomination for best Director!) and his work has won numerous awards outside the US.

One cool thing that I learned when researching Alejandro González Iñárritu is that his first feature-length film, Amores Perros, which is also the only one of his that I've seen so far, was originally conceived of as 11 short films. After 3 years and 36 drafts of the scripts, he and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga decided to narrow down the 11 shorts and expand them into three interlocking narratives for the feature-length film, which eventually earned him enough acclaim that he was able to launch his career internationally.