Being questioned about his thoughts on Trump’s proposed wall at the US-Mexico border, Inarritu- the first jury president from Mexico in Cannes history- lashed out at American president’s policies.
Politicians like Trump, Iñárritu said, “are basically ruling with rage and angriness . . . and are basically writing fiction and making people believe that those are facts. I am not a politician, but as an artist, I can express with an open heart what I think to be truthful [from working] with immigrants . . . The problem is ignorance. People do not know [their story], so it is very easy [for politicians] to manipulate them.”
An international film festival like Cannes, Iñárritu argued, is a way for audiences to be transported into different cultures and see how others live.
“In the United States, or in Mexico—where you isolate nationalistically, people just identify with themselves, and it is a very dangerous thing,” Iñárritu said. “Because then we don’t consider the otherness.”
“I am against what is happening all around the world, and I expect that there will be something that happens that stops this dangerous thing. We know how this story ends if we keep with that rhetoric. . . We think we are evolving with technology and social media,” he continued, before alluding to the Twitter-happy U.S. president. “But it seems that every Tweet is a brick of isolation and attached ideological thinking, and it is creating a lot of isolation, and a lot of paranoia with it.”
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