The incredibly gifted and innovative filmmaker Alejandro González Iñarritu is famous for its poignant psychological dramas that explore the human condition, and for its hypertext approach that connects members of an ensemble cast. The esteemed visionary has crafted and produced some remarkable images over his immaculate directorial career, perfectly telling emotional stories that have deeply touched audiences. Since his film debut with 2000’s Love Perros, Iñárritu has received critical acclaim and countless accolades for his film work. He made film industry history by becoming the first Mexican director to win Best Director at Cannes as well as the first Mexican filmmaker to win the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

Alejandro González Iñárritu has teamed up with some of Hollywood’s top talent, including Michael Keaton, Sean Penn, Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt, among a host of other notable performers. Apart from feature films, Iñárritu has made several distinguished short films like 11’09″01 September 11 and Flesh and Sand. The dynamic director’s next project will be the next Mexican comedy Bardo or (False chronicle of a handful of truths), which will explore the social and political modernity of Mexico and bring the director back to his country of origin. Here are all of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s films, ranked.

6 babel

The psychological drama of 2006 babel features an impressive cast including Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal, and depicts intertwining stories set in Mexico, Japan, the United States and Morocco. When tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, the accident inadvertently connects a diverse group of people around the world, demonstrating how truly connected we all are. The multi-narrative drama is the bookend of Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga Trilogy of Death, also composed of Love Perros and 21 grams. The gifted director wanted to tackle themes of miscommunication and globalization, highlighting how the actions of one person or group can simultaneously affect the lives of others and how the world is intertwined. babel premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, winning Iñárritu the Best Director award as well as the Golden Globe for Best Drama.

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5 21 grams

Once again, González Iñárritu demonstrates his impeccable gift for weaving stories together flawlessly in the 2003 crime thriller 21 grams, centered on a tragic car accident that brings together a grieving mother, a gravely ill mathematician, and a born-again ex-con. Some of Hollywood’s best films appear in Iñárritu’s first English language film and in the continuity of his hyperlink style, such as Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Naomi Watts and Melissa Leo, and like many other films of the director, they are told in a non-linear way. 21 grams depicts the aftermath of the freak accident that both ruins and resurrects these lives, proving they are forever linked in unpredictable ways. Iñárritu and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto wanted to achieve spontaneous yet transparent camera work “to create the feeling that the camera was present with the actors, moving, reacting and breathing with them”. The psychological drama drew universal praise from critics, with the London Evening Standard proclaiming: “21 grams flies into the icy empyrean of first-class cinema by virtue of the most traditional values: sympathetic characters and an intelligent plot.

4 biutilful

The gifted and dynamic Javier Bardem stars in the deeply moving romantic drama biutilful, following a career criminal who is told he is dying of cancer and has only months to live, so he leaves to leave the world as he pleases. Bardem delivers a heartbreaking and emotionally visceral performance that showcases his incredible array of acting while bringing Iñárritu’s delightfully constructed story to life. biutilful is the director’s first film in his native Spanish since his feature debut in 2000 Amores Perros; the picture premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival where Bardem won Best Actor. The Hollywood Reporter called the drama a “beautiful, melancholic poem about love, fatherhood and guilt” and hailed Bardem’s portrayal as “a knockout blow”. The star earned an unexpected Oscar nomination for his work in the beautifully photographed film, becoming the first Best Actor nominee entirely in Spanish.

3 Love Perros

For his feature directorial debut, Alejandro González Iñárritu directed the 2000 Mexican psychological thriller Love Perros, which centers on a teenager in the slums involved in dogfighting, a mysterious hitman, and a model who suffers a debilitating leg injury. Featuring the talent of Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal and Goya Toledo, the image is his first to use the multi-story hyperlink style, linking his interconnected narratives about the gritty, harsh reality of Mexico City through the presence of dogs. During production, Iñárritu and part of the crew were actually robbed by street gangs due to filming in poor areas of the city. Love Perros became the first part of the theme Trilogy of Death and proved to be a triumphant start for Iñárritu; the picture was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

2 Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Alejandro González Iñárritu teamed up with comedic genius Michael Keaton for the 2014 black comedy-drama Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), with the star portraying Riggan Thomson, a faded Hollywood superhero actor trying to revive his flagging career by writing and starring in a Broadway production. With an esteemed supporting cast including Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis and Edward Norton, the comedy-drama explores the stranded performer’s ego and is filmed as if it were a single take; Iñárritu chose this style of storytelling because it could “immerse the protagonist in an ‘inescapable reality’ and take the audience with him”. The director also wanted to branch out into film genres, as his previous projects were all dramas and he didn’t want to portray another tragedy. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Iñárritu.

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1 The ghost

Based on Michael Punke’s novel of the same name, the 2015 western survival drama The ghost stars movie chameleon Leonardo DiCaprio as frontier Hugh Glass who, on a fur-trading expedition in the 1820s, is brutally mauled by a bear and left for dead by his team of hunters. Glass must fight for his life in the rugged wilderness, fueled by revenge and his all-consuming desire for revenge. The ghost It took an incredible nine months to shoot, partly because the director only wanted to shoot with natural lighting. The production was grueling and caused some crew members to quit, for which Iñárritu explained that “as a director, if I identify a violin out of tune, I have to take it to the orchestra”. The dedication and hard work of the visionary creator paid off; The ghost earned Iñárritu a second consecutive Academy Award for Best Director, becoming one of three directors to achieve the feat. Its great cinematographer, Iñárritu regular Emmanuel Lubezki, won his third straight Oscar for the film, becoming the first person to do so. Audiences and critics alike raved about the film, with the picture grossing over $500 million at the box office.

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