Alejandro G. Inarritu

SHORT PROFILE Name: Alejandro González Iñárritu

DOB: 15 August 1963

Place of birth: Mexico City, Mexico

Occupation: Director "Cinema is frame, cinema is length of the lens, cinema is editing, the position of images that create time and space." Inarritu x VR The inclusion of two movies produced by Netflix turned the Cannes Film Festival 2017 competition into something of a referendum on what is cinema and what isn't. Ironic then that one of the most popular screenings at the fest was a six-and-a-half-minute virtual reality "experience" shown out of competition. Created by Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Inarritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible), the first VR film to screen at Cannes, re-creates the experience of immigrants crossing the Mexican border into the U.S. Viewers wander barefoot through a vast, dark space covered in sand and equipped with a backpack, VR headset and headphones, while virtual border guards swoop down to arrest them.