Key Takeaways
Director Alfonso Cuaron made his first visit to Korea at the Busan International Film Festival and defended the value of watching films in theaters.
He argued that new technology and streaming will not erase theatrical viewing, but will exist alongside it.
The trip also doubled as support for his son Jonas Cuaron, whose new film was invited to the festival.
Will movie theaters disappear, or simply find a new role among more viewing options? Alfonso Cuaron chose the second answer when he spoke at the Busan International Film Festival during his first visit to Korea. Rather than predicting the end of theaters, he argued for coexistence, a position that fits the way he has made films throughout his career.
From Gravity to Roma, Cuaron has built films that pull audiences into a physical experience, not just a story. His comments in Busan were therefore more than polite festival talk. They reflected the worldview of a filmmaker who has long treated cinema as something that occupies a room, not just a screen.
For Cuaron, cinema is about experience
Alfonso Cuaron has always been a filmmaker obsessed with how a film feels in the audience's body. Gravity made viewers feel stranded in space. Children of Men used long takes to make a dystopian chase feel immediate and unbroken. Roma captured the texture of 1970s Mexico City with such precision that the setting became part of the drama itself.
That is why his defense of theater viewing in Busan did not sound like a routine tribute to the past. He acknowledged that new technologies and younger audiences are changing viewing habits, but said theater-going will remain alongside those newer forms. He was not claiming that theaters are the only legitimate place to watch movies. He was insisting that cinema has always had multiple ways of being experienced.
His point also matches the current state of film culture. Streaming is convenient and immediate, while theaters offer scale, immersion, and a shared event. Neither replaces the other. A film like Cuaron's, built on sound, size, and spatial tension, gains something essential on a large screen that it cannot fully reproduce at home.
Busan brought together family and festival
This first Korea trip was also a family affair. Cuaron came with his son Jonas Cuaron, whose new film was invited to Busan's World Cinema section. The younger Cuaron has worked across literature, visual arts, photography, and screenwriting, and he also co-wrote the script for his father's Gravity. The two attended the festival opening and later took part in a Q and A after an IMAX screening of Gravity.
Jonas's film follows a young migrant who leaves Mexico for the United States in search of a better life. The story of labor, discrimination, and survival naturally echoes today's anti-immigration climate. Alfonso Cuaron said every film inevitably carries a political message, whether the filmmaker wants it or not, and that this becomes especially clear in stories about immigration.
What makes the film interesting, he said, is that it does not stay trapped in tragedy. Immigration stories are often framed only through suffering, but this one also includes joy and a desire to build community. Jonas said he wanted to show the face of the migrant rather than reduce the topic to statistics. That is a revealing idea: when cinema deals with big social issues, it still has to return to one person's expression.
Jonas Cuaron and Korean cinema
Jonas Cuaron is not simply the son of a famous director living in his father's shadow. Alfonso Cuaron praised him as a filmmaker with his own visual language, one who cares deeply about audiences and tends to focus on themes rather than verbal flourishes. That awareness of audience, he said, also shaped his own way of thinking about film. He even recalled once telling his son not to major in film, hoping he would keep a wider view of the world. Jonas, he joked, was already too far in by then.
The younger Cuaron also showed a strong interest in Korean cinema. He said he was a fan of Train to Busan, Yon Sang-ho's zombie film about passengers trying to survive a mysterious outbreak on a high-speed train from Seoul to Busan. He also singled out Bong Joon-ho's The Host and Parasite, Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice, and Na Hong-jin's Hope as films that impressed him. What he admires, he said, is the way Korean filmmakers build on genre while adding humor.
That preference tells us something about the Cuaron family taste in cinema. They seem drawn to films that are accessible without being shallow, serious without being remote. In other words, they value movies that invite viewers in rather than lecture them from a distance.
Theaters versus platforms is the wrong question
Seen against today's film industry, Cuaron's Busan remarks feel especially timely. Streaming wins on convenience. Theaters win on concentration and shared experience. The real question is not which one defeats the other, but which kind of film truly comes alive in each space. The same work can feel like information on a small screen and like an event on a large one.
Cuaron's own filmography makes that argument for him. His movies remain legible at home, but their power shrinks without the dimension, distance, and sound that theaters can deliver. At the same time, insisting that only theaters matter would ignore reality. Audiences already move between platforms and cinemas depending on the film and the moment. Protecting theatrical viewing does not mean rejecting streaming. It means being precise about what only theaters can do.
That is why his first visit to Korea felt like more than a celebrity courtesy stop. Cuaron showed that he has spent his career proving the artistic value of the theater, while also recognizing that cinema now travels through multiple channels. Theaters and platforms are not enemies. They are different paths for the same work, and the challenge is preserving a film's force no matter where it is seen.
