Alejandro G. Iñárritu is back in the Oscar race…
Mexico has selected the 59-year-old Mexican five-time Academy Award winner’s Bardo as its official entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar race.
The immersive work stars Daniel Giménez Cacho as a renowned Los Angeles-based Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker who, after being named the recipient of a prestigious international award, is compelled to return to his native country, unaware that this simple trip will push him to an existential limit.
The film had its world premiere in its three-hour original version in competition at the Venice Film Festival in early September.
Netflix recently dropped a trailer for the film, which opens theatrically in Mexico on October 27, followed by a limited theatrical release in the U.S., Spain and Argentina on November 4 before rolling out in a global expansion on November 18.
The film will debut December 1 on Netflix.
The work reunites Iñárritu with a number of his longtime collaborators including co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, who also took credits on Birdman and Biutiful.
Bardo — whose full title is Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths — marks Iñárritu’s first film to be shot in Mexico since Amores Perros, which also represented Mexico at the Academy Awards and was nominated in 2000.
The film also features production design by the designer Eugenio Caballero, who previously won an Academy Award for his work on Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, and costume design by Anna Terrazas (The Deuce, Roma).
Outside of the best international film category and its foreign language predecessor, Iñárritu previously won Oscars for Carne y Arena (2018), The Revenant (2016) and Birdman (2015) and was nominated for Babel (2007).
Mexico has garnered eight nominations to date with Roberto Gavaldón’s Macario (1960), Ismael Rodriguez’s The Important Man (1961), Luis Alcoriza’s The Pearl Of Tiayucan (1963), Miguel Litten’s Letters Of Marusia (1975), Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (2000), Carlos Carrera’s El Crimen del Padre Amaro (2002), Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and Iñárritu’s Biutiful (2010).
Cuaron won the country its only Oscar in the category with Roma in 2018.
