Alfonso Tiberio Cuarón Orozco[a] (US: /kwɑːˈroʊn/ kwar-OHN;[1] Spanish: [alˈfonso kwaˈɾon] ⓘ; born 28 November 1961) is a Mexican filmmaker.

There he met the director Carlos Marcovich and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki,[6] and they made what would be his first short film, Vengeance Is Mine.

His television work led to assignments as an assistant director for several film productions including La Gran Fiesta (1985), Gaby: A True Story (1987) and Romero (1989).

[8] The film, which also starred cabaret singer Astrid Hadad and model/actress Claudia Ramírez (with whom Cuarón was linked between 1989 and 1993) was a big hit in Mexico.

After this success, director Sydney Pollack hired Cuarón to direct an episode of Fallen Angels, a series of neo-noir stories produced for the Showtime premium cable network in 1993; other directors who worked on the series included Steven Soderbergh, Jonathan Kaplan, Peter Bogdanovich, and Tom Hanks.

[9] In 1995, Cuarón released his first feature film produced in the United States, A Little Princess, an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic 1905 novel of the same name.

The film received critical acclaim with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring, "[the film] is a bright, beautiful and enchantingly childlike vision", one that "draw[s] its audience into the wittily heightened reality of a fairy tale" and "takes enough liberties to re-invent rather than embalm Miss Burnett's assiduously beloved story".

[11] Cuarón's next feature was also a literary adaptation, a modernized version of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert De Niro.

This Great Expectations has a seductive, enchanting feel that has nothing to do with sweet, gauzy sentiments or calculatedly “magical” Hollywood imagery".

[13] In 2001, Cuarón found himself returning to Mexico with a Spanish-speaking cast to film Y tu mamá también, starring Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdú.

[16] Critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "It is clear Cuaron is a gifted director, and here he does his best work to date.

Cuarón faced criticism at the time from some Harry Potter fans for his approach to the film, notably its tendency to take more creative liberties with the source material than its predecessors.

[22] In 2006, Cuarón's feature Children of Men, an adaptation of the P. D. James novel starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine, received wide critical acclaim including three Academy Award nominations.

In 2013, Cuarón created Believe, a science fiction/fantasy/adventure series that was broadcast as part of the 2013–14 United States network television schedule on NBC as a mid-season entry.

[31] The project was produced by Cuarón, Gabriela Rodríguez and Nicolás Celis and starred Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira both of whom received Oscar nominations.

[35] His first series for Apple was the psychological thriller Disclaimer, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Louis Partridge and Sasha Baron Cohen.

[36] Cuaron's style is a mix of several mainstream Hollywood conventions while breaking from that dominant influence by taking an unorthodox approach that uses voiceover narration and by unconventionally lengthy shots.

In October 2023, Cuarón signed an open letter from artists to US President Joe Biden calling for a ceasefire of Israeli bombardment in Gaza.