If the name Jonás Cuarón seems familiar, that’ll be because he is in the illustrious Cuarón lineage. His father is Alfonso Cuarón (director of Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban and Children Of Men) and Cuarón Jr. is now preparing his second directing feature: a new thriller entitled Desierto. Watch the latest trailer below.
Desierto – which, as you may have guessed, is the Spanish word for ‘desert’ – is a horror movie set in Trump’s America, pitting illegal Mexican immigrants against a gun-toting border-guarding redneck vigilante.
Gael García Bernal (who worked with Papa Cuarón on Y Tu Mamá También) leads the group of Mexican immigrants making the treacherous journey into the Land of the Free, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan continues his villainous streak from The Walking Dead as a one-man killing machine, picking off the border-crossers with his rifle and pet dog.
The Cuarón father-son team co-wrote Gravity together (with Jonás also directing the seven-minute related short Aningaaq) and have collaborated again on this script. It's a genuine family affair, in fact, as uncle Carlos is listed as a producer.
Despite mixed reviews in its native country, Desierto has already been selected as the Mexican entry for next year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar entry, which surely makes it intriguing proposition. It’s due for a 14 October release in the US, although there’s no word of a UK release just yet.