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Watching your films, I often glimpse Catholic iconography. That seems important to you. Did you grow up in a religious family?

Iñ árritu: I have been raised in a Catholic family. My mother is a practicing Catholic. I went to a Catholic college. So, I always have been close [to Catholicism], and I always feel that [when] people criticize Catholicism, [the problem] is not really Catholicism, but the people in Catholicism.

We're all messed up. It seems like an excuse, to ignore religion because people are bad. It seems like a cop-out to me.

I respect every religion. For me, it is especially important to maintain my interior life. My spirituality, my connectedness. That is the way I think. That is the way I deal with life and tough moments. I keep in touch with something bigger than me. And I connect with people who have an interior life—a connection with something bigger than them. They realize there's a supernatural existence, something we can't understand.

To think that we can understand everything is such stupidity because our senses are so limited. We are so limited that to feel that we can understand the creation scientifically is a little bit naïve. It's very childish.

So, now that you've completed three of these ambitious, complicated films, what's next?

Iñ árritu: I'm developing a [project] that will take me a couple of years more. I like to explore things that I haven't done. I like the possibility of failure. I don't want to be in a comfortable zone.

© Jeffrey Overstreet 2006 subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. Click for reprint information.

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