The three friends take Hollywood for one night

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro play with the models of 'Pinocchio'.MICHAEL TRAN (AFP)

A young man asked on Friday night at the Fanny's bar, the bar of the Museum of the Film Academy, what was all the commotion about.

“It's a Netflix event.

Three Mexican directors are coming, ”the waitress replied as she prepared a cocktail.

Those three filmmakers were Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu, colleagues who share a homeland, obsession with death and recent years marked by successes.

With seven Oscars under their belt between the three of them, the gathering turned Friday night into a major Hollywood event.

The evening began with a bit of nostalgia.

Del Toro remembered the first photo of the three that went around the world.

It was taken 16 years ago on the red carpet of the Oscars in February 2007. The Guadalajara-born filmmaker was nominated for

and Iñárritu had received his first Best Director nomination for

.

Both posed next to Cuarón.

The friends' career was taking off.

They also did it as entrepreneurs with Cha Cha Chá, a company with which they helped produce and distribute five films.

A lot has happened since then.

"Two marriages and 90 kilos later," joked Del Toro, who along with Iñárritu returns to a new awards season.

Both do it with films where they highlight their maturity as storytellers.

The filmmaker from Guadalajara presents his adaptation of

, a stop motion animated film where paternity stands out, a subject on which he has meditated after having lost both of his parents in the period since the premiere of

and its latest film.

The Mexicans Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro, from left to right, upon arrival at the ceremony.REUTERS

“There are a lot of people who are going to their biographies.

We are in a moment of self-reflection, thinking about where we are going, ”said Del Toro, who will find out on Tuesday if he wins one of the three Golden Globes for which he is nominated.

The director cited some recent films where his colleagues have looked back.

Among them, Steven Spielberg in

, Sam Mendes in

and

, by James Gray.

Iñárritu is also promoting his most personal work.

has proven challenging for viewers who follow his work since he surprised with

at the turn of the 21st century.

Cuarón reminded Iñárritu that he once told him that after making babel he felt that he needed to renew his cinematographic language.

“I knew I needed to reinvent myself.

I was sick of myself," said the Oscar winner for

.

The search for this new tool to communicate began with

, a film starring Javier Bardem that took him to Spain and back to Spanish after having shot

and

.

“My films are an X-ray of an emotional moment.

Even if you deny or suppress it.

That's why I can't watch these movies.

I can't see things I can't remember because they represent a time in life.

They have an intensity that sometimes you don't recognize, ”she stated in the conversation.

Focused on what will be his streaming television debut and without a movie to promote in the current cycle, Alfonso Cuarón limited himself to serving only as a moderator.

This much to the frustration of del Toro, who tried to ask a couple of questions that the director of Children of Man avoided at all costs.

"I didn't get the memo or what... Here it says the three friends and this bastard doesn't speak," joked Del Toro to the laughter of the David Geffen auditorium, which was completely full.

Cuarón has been the center of gravity of the three-way friendship for decades.

He and del Toro discovered, several decades later, that they were in the same theater watching the same movies.

Cuarón's family, originally from Mexico City, spent the summer at Lake Chapala, a resort near Guadalajara.

In those summer passes, the minors, without knowing each other, marveled at

,

and

.

Del Toro also recalled how he visited Cuarón at his house to tell him the plot of

front of a chicken broth from beginning to end.

creator

.

On another occasion, Cuarón, who had been making movies for years before filming

, called his friend one day to recommend that he see

.

This was the first film by a man who had trained in advertising.

Del Toro listened and thought that the debut of the then-called González Iñárritu was "a masterpiece" with 20 minutes to spare.

So he called him to tell him.

Trust soon blossomed in the relationship and del Toro flew from Austin, Texas, to Mexico to convince him to pull out the scissors and cut out much of the second story that forms the plot.

Despite the trajectories they have achieved, at night there was also talk of failure.

“This morning a movie was rejected for me,” revealed Del Toro, who on January 24 will find out if his Pinocchio is nominated for an Oscar.

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