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BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS, Kicks off the 20th FICM With Alejandro González Iñárritu at the University Cultural Center

The 20th edition of the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) began with the Press Conference for BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022), by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Attended by Daniela Michel, founder and General Director of FICM; Alejandro Ramírez, president of the festival; actors Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Íker Sánchez Solano; production designer Eugenio Caballero, co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, costume designer Anna Terrazas, and producer Stacy Perskie.

This is the fourth time FICM has kicked off with a screening of a work by the five-time Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu. The conference began with an introduction by the festival’s director, Daniela Michel, who said: “there is no film like it in the history of Mexican cinema.”
 
A mirror feature film for the Mexican director and a cast that recognized themselves in both the script and the characters they play. Actress Ximena Lamadrid empathizes with moving away from her Mexican roots, since she lived outside the country for many years.
 
This production brought a great opportunity for protagonist Daniel Gimenez Cacho, who expressed: "It's something that I had never experienced, and it will be unlikely for me to experience it again." 
 
Additionally, BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, is Íker Solano’s acting debut.
 
About their relationship during filming, the cast shared that: "With Alejandro, there is a rare look at the work of the actor... It’s the work of someone who knows the job very well, has studied it, and is passionate about it," commented Gimenez Cacho.

The production work was shrouded in a versatile and dreamlike atmosphere, created thanks to the work of costume designer Anna Terrazas and Eugenio Caballero, who was responsible for production design. Terrazas and Caballero faced the challenges of creating a universal style that could traverse between the 1920s to the present.
 
Regarding the literary references, González Iñárritu built a narrative where writers such as Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez and Octavio Paz converge.
 
BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, for Iñárritu, is “the absurdity of memories that keep changing… nostalgia and melancholy are a trap and humor is a remedy. I approached this film from melancholy and humor.” A space for self-knowledge, criticism, an exercise in liberation and a pseudo-biography, in a nonsensical style that doesn’t let us to recognize what is real and what isn’t.
 

It’s a film that delivers him from madness because the ease of creativity allows him to let go of apprehension and continue producing freely. Aided by the experience that time has granted him.
 
In his new projects, Iñárritu plans to explore uncertain panoramas, full of challenges, ridicule, and questions. Always keeping a quote by Irish Literature Nobel Prize (1969), Samuel Beckett, in mind: “To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail…”