Ale­jan­dro González Iñár­ritu is tak­ing his tal­ents to Netflix

A polar­iz­ing fig­ure, that Ale­jan­dro González Iñár­ritu. To some — Acad­e­my vot­ers — he’s a pio­neer­ing titan of the mod­ern cin­e­ma, con­struct­ing max­i­mal­ist med­i­ta­tions on heavy exis­ten­tial mat­ters like mor­tal­i­ty and the util­i­ty of art. To oth­ers — film crit­ics — he’s a self-impor­tant gas­bag with an inflat­ed sense of his own skill, sub­sti­tut­ing con­spic­u­ous ele­ments of style for con­trol of tone and rig­or of ideas. Soon, these war­ring fac­tions will get the chance to duke it out once again. For begun, the Iñár­ritu Wars have.

Net­flix sent out an eye-catch­ing press release this after­noon, announc­ing that they have secured glob­al rights to the upcom­ing BAR­DO, False Chron­i­cle of a Hand­ful of Truths. The word-sal­ad title harken­ing back to the mouth­ful of Bird­man or the Unex­pect­ed Virtue of Igno­rance might sug­gest he’s con­tin­u­ing onward in that Hol­ly­wood vein, but in actu­al­i­ty, he’s going all the way back to his roots.

The new film, his first since 2015’s The Revenant, will return the direc­tor to his home of Mex­i­co — last seen in his fil­mog­ra­phy with Amores Per­ros in 2000. Described in the bul­letin as ​“a nos­tal­gic com­e­dy set against an epic per­son­al jour­ney,” the film fol­lows an acclaimed Mex­i­can doc­u­men­tar­i­an and jour­nal­ist who also has a home­com­ing in the coun­try he’s been away from for so long, which trig­gers a per­son­al cri­sis of iden­ti­ty, fam­i­ly, and memory.

Aside from the involve­ment of mas­ter cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Dar­ius Khond­ji, there aren’t many big names com­pa­ra­ble to past stars Leonar­do DiCaprio or Michael Keaton in the mix this time around. Lead­ing actors Daniel Giménez Cacho and Grisel­da Sicil­iani are known through­out the Span­ish-speak­ing world, but lit­tle recog­ni­tion else­where, and their cast­ing hints at a Roma-style eschew­ing of star­pow­er for lived-in naturalism.

With shoot­ing on track to warp by fall, Net­flix will give Iñárritu’s newest a glob­al release in the­aters next year before bring­ing the title online to their stream­ing library. Late in 2023, bat­ten down the hatch­es and pre­pare for a fresh round of dis­course, what­ev­er shape it may take.