Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, along with top photographers Mary Ellen Mark, Patrick Bard, Graciela Iturbide, and Miguel Rio Branco, bring together their highly perceptive visions on cultural diversity in a book that combines seductive images and firsthand remarks on the unique experience of shooting "Babel". Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, the film is the third in the director's trilogy started by "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams". Shot in Morocco, Tijuana, and Tokyo, and involving a multilingual cast lead by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Koji Yakusho, as well non-professional actors from the three countries portrayed, "Babel" continues the director's quest to explore the effects of loss and grief, and seeks to relate the modern implications of ancient myth on the origins of human inability to successfully communicate. This book is a visual recollection of the parallel stories and real-life characters that revolved around the making of "Babel", and the unexpected ways in which fiction and reality collide.
Photographs both from the set and the surrounding disparate landscapes are paired with the director's personal commentary on the larger-than-life film shoot. Introduced with essays by novelist and poet Eliseo Alberto and Gonzalez Inarritu, as well as an interview with the director by Rodrigo Garcia, the result is an engaging book that both complements "Babel's" powerful statement on the barrier of language, and reveals the fascinating reality of the people and places that inspired the film.
