Jonás Cuarón

Writer-director Jonás Cuarón followed in the footsteps of his father, celebrated director Alfonso Cuarón, by co-writing the Oscar-winning "Gravity" (2013) before helming the intense survival drama "Desierto" ("Forsaken") in 2015. Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Cuarón hailed from a filmmaking family: his father directed such international hits as "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (2001) and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (2004), while his uncle, Carlos Cuarón, co-wrote "Tambien" and directed the independent feature "Rudo y Cursi" (2008). He lived in Mexico with his mother, actress Mariana Elizondo, until the age of 15, when he moved to New York to live with his father. Cuarón became interested in film while attending Vassar College; there, he directed his first film, which took inspiration from Chris Marker's "La Jetée" (1962) for its unusual structure of photographs edited into a narrative. He then began his feature-length debut, "Ano una" ("Year of the Nail," 2007), as his senior thesis, but with his father's help, the project was expanded to 90 minutes in length and premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2007. Cuarón's next project, "The Shock Doctrine" (2007), was a documentary short which attempted to link torture methods used by the CIA with political schemes to foment dissent in countries around the world. In 2013, Cuarón and his father collaborated on the screenplay for the Oscar-winning drama "Gravity," which earned them the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film, among numerous other accolades. In addition to his writing duties, Cuarón also wrote, director and produced "Aningaaq" (2014), a companion piece to "Gravity" which expands a scene in the film in which Sandra Bullock's stranded astronaut converses with an Inuit fisherman who intercepted one of her distress signal transmissions. The following year, Cuarón co-wrote and directed "Forsaken," a taut thriller with co-producer Gael Garcia Bernal as one of several Mexican immigrants stalked by a psychotic sniper (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they attempt to cross the Sonoran Desert. Co-produced by Cuarón, his father and uncle, "Desierto" made its international debut at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival.