After co-writing the blockbuster Gravity with his father Alfonso Cuarón, Jonás Cuarón is back — this time stepping into the director’s chair. Desierto is a thriller starring Gael García Bernal, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Alondra Hidalgo, and today we have the first trailer. Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, the story depicts the migrant experience in an intense fashion.
“I took a trip through the U.S. Southwest where I encountered first-hand stories surrounding immigration and the often cruel and violent story of the migrant journey. I was very moved and immediately felt compelled to outline the film – which happened even before writing Gravity,” Cuarón says. “I’ve always been very interested in the concept of films like Spielberg’s Duel, Konchalovskiy’s Runaway Train and Bresson’s A Man Escaped. They are non-stop nail biting thrillers with very little dialogue but that at the same time manage to juggle various themes. I was very interested in the drive of these films where the audience connects with the story and character in a very visceral way.”
We said in our review, “A tense thriller of survival set against a desolate landscape of quiet austerity until the deafening sound of our heroes’ pursuer returns after a brief respite allowing these strangers the time to emotively talk about their lives—no, it’s not Gravity. Filmmaker Jonás Cuarón certainly has a type, though, since his sophomore effort in the director’s chair, Desierto, has a lot of formal similarities to his and father Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning ride. Thematically different since the whole exists in the wasteland battlegrounds of the Mexican border, is fought by the impoverished rather than elite, and includes a villain possessed by a conscious psychopathy in his treatment of other human beings, it’s still difficult to separate the two when the same screenwriter worked on both.”
Check out the trailer below.
From Jonás Cuarón and Alfonso Cuarón, the acclaimed filmmakers of Gravity, comes a unique, modern vision of terror. Desierto is a visceral, heart-pounding suspense-thriller packed with tension and suspense from start to finish, starring Gael García Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries and Y Tu Mamá También) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen). What begins as a hopeful journey to seek a better life becomes a harrowing and primal fight for survival when a deranged, rifle-toting vigilante chases a group of unarmed men and women through the treacherous U.S.-Mexican border. In the harsh, unforgiving desert terrain, the odds are stacked firmly against them as they continuously discover there’s nowhere to hide from the unrelenting, merciless killer.
Desierto opens on March 4th, 2016.