Several security or staff members on the film crew for Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón’s latest movie were left bloodied and bruised after an altercation with borough officials on a downtown Mexico City street, authorities said on Wednesday November 2.
The Mexican director is making his first film in Mexico in at least 15 years. No title has been announced, but Participant media says the movie is about “a year in the life of a middle-class family in Mexico City in the early 1970s.”
After winning an Oscar for the space epic “Gravity,” Cuarón is returning to his roots, but Mexico City’s streets aren’t like Hollywood.
The dispute on Tuesday Nov. 1 involved private security personnel apparently hired by the film crew, who had taped off part of some streets, either for filming or support vehicles.
The city prosecutor’s office said they had permission from a federal film board to do so. But officials from the borough of Cuauhtémoc — which covers the downtown area — arrived and said they hadn’t been notified.
Mexican academy award winning director Alfonso Cuarón and his crew were attacked in Mexico City (Photo: Excelsior)
The officials began to collect and confiscate the traffic cones the crew was using to rope off space. The security crew tried to stop them, displaying the permit, but borough officials said that borough permits were needed and that street closures for filming had become a problem in the downtown area.
City police said that “after an exchange of words, there was an altercation, with no injuries reported.”
But city prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the dispute, because “the victims were the subject of verbal and physical aggressions, and some of them had personal possessions taken.”
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Source: http://www.thenews.mx/