During the Academy Award red carpet arrivals this year, three Mexican filmmakers happily walked in together, a tight-knit group of friends who shared one thing in common that day.

They each had a film nominated for multiple Oscars, sometimes in the same categories, making them friendly rivals.

Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu was there for Babel.

Guillermo del Toro was there for Pan's Labyrinth.

And Alfonso Cuaron was there for Children of Men.

A red carpet TV interrogator tried to get the trio to admit they were the Mexican version of the "three amigos" of American cinema who were about to present the best director prize to (as it turned out) their old pal Martin Scorsese. That trio was made up of legendary Hollywood directors Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.

But the impish del Toro, embarrassed by the complimentary comparison to his Hollywood elders, quipped that the Mexicans were closer to another trio of Americanos: "I was thinking more like Larry, Curly and Moe," he said, invoking The Three Stooges.

"That was a typical Guillermo thing," Cuaron tells Sun Media with a mischievous laugh. The 36-year-old Cuaron is on the phone to Toronto from New York, via a Hollywood hookup, to talk about the March 27th debut of Children of Men on DVD.

Cuaron's powerhouse sci-fi thriller is one of truly remarkable films of 2006, even if it did not succeed as well as his two friends' films did on Oscar night. When the gala gave way to the after-Oscar party scene, Pan's Labyrinth had three Oscars to show for its six nominations; Babel had one Oscar for its seven nominations; but Children of Men won none, despite three nominations.

That included two for Cuaron personally, one shared with Alex Rodriguez for best film editing, the other shared with four others (Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby) for best adapted screenplay. There was also that nom for Emmanuel Lubezki for best cinematography, which was thought to be a lock in most pre-Oscar prediction lists. "He is amazing, Lubezki," Cuaron says of his fellow Mexican. "He has been nominated four times and he never gets it -- but he is so cool with that. And, also, we were so happy that Guillermo got it." Del Toro's Mexican cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro, won for Pan's Labyrinth.

"But, saying so, I consider that Lubezki is an amazing genius!"

The word genius, which should be used rarely in cinema, also applies to Cuaron, whose cinema ranges across many genres and several countries of origin, but is always recognizable for its striking originality in the way he uses his visuals to convey stories and themes. Before Children of Men, a Hollywood production of an essentially British production, Cuaron directed films such as Love in the Time of Hysteria, A Little Princess, Great Expectations, Y Tu Mama Tambien (for his first Oscar nom as a screenwriter, an honour he shared with his brother Carlos Cuaron), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and a segment of the omnibus film Paris, Je t'Aime.

Among future projects is Mexico '68, an examination of the student rebellions in that year of worldwide discontent. Children of Men, of course, is also about societal unrest. Set in Britain in 2027, and based on the dystopian novel by science fiction author P.D. James, Children of Men supposes a dysfunctional, violent world in which chaos and anarchy have destroyed societies around the globe. Only Britain functions -- and strictly as a fascist police state. Meanwhile, the core nightmare -- humanity is stricken with mass infertility and no baby has been born for 18 years -- threatens the future of the species.

Yet the themes of the piece, as a film, operate only in the background as Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine and Chiwetel Ejiofor play out a more personal saga in the foreground. Children of Men is not agit-prop theatre that merely tries to hammer its themes home, Cuaron says.

"That is something that I was really adamant about. Because I am becoming really bored, particularly in mainstream cinema, with movies that are just illustrated scripts or illustrated radio plays. But that is not cinema.

"You can go to the theatre, buy your ticket and your popcorn and your Coca-Cola, and you can get in the theatre and put on a blindfold and eat your popcorn and drink your Coca-Cola. And, at the end of the thing, you would not miss one single thing in the movie."

He complains that too many of these mainstream movies are obvious just from listening to the dialogue, rendering the visuals superfluous.

"What I love about the movies is cinema -- this thing in which information is conveyed through cinematic moments, mostly through the camera."

In his cinema, Cuaron tries to do just that, like his Mexican friends, Inarritu and del Toro. Unlike most Americans, they are hardwired in Mexico to make films which question authority, Cuaron says.

Mexicans, by nature, they distrust government, power and the establishment. Americans, by nature, they are the complete opposite. Americans, they have faith in the system. Mexicans, they completely distrust the system. So I guess there is a certain level of skepticism about how things work. We Mexicans, we try to cope with it, we try to understand it."

In cinema, that expresses itself in films such as Babel, Pan Labyrinth and his own Children of Men, Cuaron says. "You have to connect to the way that you believe in things, the impulse in the way you do things. You just have to keep connecting yourself to that. And you are only as good a director as your collaborators. So it is about your collaborators."

For example, the stunning ambush scene -- shot as one long tracking shot inside a car being attacked from all sides by anarchists while Owen, Moore and Ejiofor try to protect the world's only pregant woman -- required the invention of new technology to pull it off. It was Lubezki who figured out how to do it after weeks of frustration, Cuaron says.

"The whole diagnosis was: 'Impossible! The shot cannot be made!'"

When Cuaron suggested doing it as a CGI shot, and not as a naturalistic action scene like the rest of the picture, Lubezki threatened to quit. Instead, Cuaron gave him a week to come up with a plan.

"He had to invent new technology to do the shot," Cuaron says. "But (it worked) because you have collaborators taking care of you."

That collaborative effort is shown in detail on the DVD, in a featurette that shows exactly how the shot was created, how a revolutionary piece of film equipment was invented to make it happen.

In the same vein, the movie's marquee star, Clive Owen, also deserves special praise as a team player, Cuaron says. "Clive I consider a collaborator as much as he is my star. He was there just taking care that I didn't drift into my insecurity."

The results are obvious in the film, which was acclaimed by critics even though it never became a big box office hit. Nor did anyone expect an adult drama of this complexity to become a huge hit.

So DVD is the future of Children of Men, Cuaron says.

"The reality is that, in the life of your film, in the big scope of things, the theatrical (release) of your film is minimal. The life of your film is in DVD, or whatever form comes after DVD. In other words, home video. That is where your movie is going to have its longest life, not only in terms of amount of people who are going to see it but (in terms of the time it will be seen into the future).

"If I have an ambition as a filmmaker, it is not about the opening weekend. For me, it is about the long life of your movie. For me, it is to know that, 20 years from now, people will keep on referring to your movie and watching your movie. Opening weekend and that other stuff is good for business. And good for your ego. It is a good instant rush. But the reason I love films is that I love cinema."

Cinema, Cuaron says, needs to last a lifetime or even longer, like the old American and international classics he grew up watching in arthouses and films clubs in Mexico City. That is one of the reasons he is fussy about the transfer of his films to DVD. And why he recoils in horror when forced to release a fullscreen edition of a film he shot in widescreen (Children of Men is available in both versions).

"You are talking about something that drives me a little nuts," Cuaron says of the fullscreen pan-and-scan editions. "Filling the screen: That is American real estate mentality. I don't understand what is the big deal of having a little strip (of black) underneath a film. Why do they prefer to fill up the whole machine and not see the whole frame (of the original film)?"

Real cinema, Cuaron says, is about seeing what the filmmaker originally intended you to see.