Carlos Reygadas Director
Filmography Selected
Carlos Reygadas is a Mexican film director, writer and producer.
He studied law in Mexico City and later specialized in the law of armed conflict and the use of force in London. After quitting the Mexican Foreign Service he made four short films in Belgium before filming Japón, which was presented at the Rotterdam and the Cannes film festivals in 2002, where it received a special mention for the Camera d’Or. The film was coproduced by himself and his long time producing partner, Jaime Romandía.
In 2004 they produced Amat Esclante’s first film, Sangre, and have since coproduced the rest of his films. in 2005 Reygadas premiered at the Cannes Film Festival his second film, Battle in Heaven, in competition.
Also at Cannes he was awarded the Jury Prize in 2007 for Silent Light and the Best Director award for Post Tenebras Lux in 2012.
Our Time premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.
Features:
2018: OUR TIME (Nuestro Tiempo)
2012: POST TENEBRAS LUX
2007: SILENT LIGHT (Luz Silenciosa)
2005: BATTLE IN HEAVEN (Batalla en el Cielo)
2002: JAPÓN
★★★★★
"This three-hour film is so rich, so strange, so darkly glittering that we’re bewildered where to begin.
There is something Joycean — and accolades come no higher — about this ambitious, exploring, ellipsis-rich film."
Nigel Andrews, The Financial Times
★★★★
"An unnerving, bold and subtly complex dissection of male ego and aggression."
David Jenkins, Little White Lies
'This critic has seen “Our Time” twice now, and at each screening was equal parts enthralled, exasperated, impatient and inspired....The movie asks a lot of the viewer, but to this viewer, it gave back more.'
'A love letter read over an epic shot of a plane’s descent is unaccountably moving.'
'A scene in which Genesis’ “The Carpet Crawlers” plays while the camera explores the engine block of a pickup truck may be my favorite film sequence of the century so far.'
Glenn Kenny,
New York Times
'...most striking of all is a scene in which she (Esther) drives home through the rain, lost in an erotic reverie, and the camera moves in for a surprising closeup of the engine of her truck while Genesis’ “The Carpet Crawlers” floods the soundtrack. “We’ve got to get in to get out” goes that song’s stirring refrain, an oddly perfect choice for a story in which intimacy becomes alienation, and liberation starts to look more like entrapment.'
Justin Chang,
LA Times
“Our Time” is the rare spiritual drama that not only feels genuinely mysterious, but also appears to have been made by people who are aware of and interested in their human characters’ flaws. Carlos Reygadas splices human drama...into beguiling, awe-inspiring panoramic landscape shots that give viewers a sense of scope and perspective that’s often lacking from other contemporary movies about faith and religion.
Simon Abrams,
Rogerebert.com
'This latest masterpiece from the legendary filmmaker asks the hard questions about love and marriage and our fleeting existence. Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas has spawned his most narratively accessible and emotionally open work to date.'
' With his signature epic visuals — wide shots of majestic landscapes captured under stunning natural light — that lend grandeur to the intimate, the film is personal in essence, even if specifics differ from the director’s off-set life.'
Carlos Aguilar,
The Wrap
‘A soul-searching work of scorching honesty that functions both as an anatomy of love and marriage, and as an evisceration of masculinity.’
Giovanni Marchini Camia, Sight and Sound
'It’s a film in which fabrications share the frame with natural phenomena, in which staged scenes give way to spontaneous life, in which the unexpected and inexplicable invade what had seemed situationally familiar. Our Time is the kind of film that’s capable of inverting our entire understanding of cinematic truth...
Reygadas is stealing and bending select moments from a non-fictional reality that’s wilder and less predictable than anything he or we could ever devise. It’s daunting, but also inviting.'
'Intensely moving…profoundly sad…unnerving'