I just wanted to show the migrants as complex humans with flaws and weakness, with good and bad things, and show that they're parents and family men. I wanted to show them with everything, as they are.

I saw what I could [in Mexico City], but we rarely got anything other than big, mainstream American films.

I made commercials for corporations like Volkswagen and Coca-Cola, but I was always the one to write them, too, which was a very good exercise, because I learned to tell little stories.

Maybe next year the government might impose some immigration rules on the academy. Two Mexicans in a row is suspicious. [On Mexican immigrants in the US] I hope they can be treated with respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.

All my films have always been released in the autumn, maybe because they're more melancholy to people.

I've listened to music all my life. I've always felt that music tells more stories sometimes than films, with more possibilities. Every time you listen to them, songs bring different images and moods - depending on where you are in your life, you can listen to a song and it means something different.

I personally can't handle frivolous violence. I overreact to it.