‘Alien: Romulus’ Director Fede Alvarez Charms Hometown Crowd With the Story of His Career in Ventana Sur Masterclass

variety.com:

Jamie Lang Hollywood heavyweight director Fede Alvarez returned to his home country of Uruguay this week to host a masterclass at the Ventana Sur market, held in Montevideo for the first time this year.

Eliciting loads of laughs and several enthusiastic rounds of applause, Alvarez reflected on his personal journey from a teenage filmmaker shooting superhero movies with his friends to helming one of Hollywood’s most iconic sci-fi franchises with this year’s “Alien: Romulus,” which grossed $351 million at the global box office.

Other standout titles in the filmmaker’s impressive resume include the 2016 horror hit “Don’t Breath” and 2013’s “Evil Dead” remake and 2009 breakout short “Panic Attack!” Below, five takeaways from a Variety conversation with the filmmaker and his Ventana Sur masterclass. Superhero Origin Story Alvarez may feel right at home in Hollywood today, but his first trip to Tinseltown came more than two decades ago, in a story he says very few people know about. “In 2003, I won a prize that brought a friend and me to Hollywood for the premiere of ‘X-Men 2.’ For me, as a young guy in my twenties to leave my parents and come to the Chinese Theater, it might seem like kind of a mundane thing for anyone who is from Hollywood or works here, but for me it was the most magical day of my life.” Alvarez recalled that sitting in a crowd loaded with A-list actors and big-name directors on all sides gave him a sense of perspective that was key in developing his early career. “That trip is what helped me see that these people were just regular human beings.

They were using the same bathrooms, talking, eating popcorn with everyone else, and that really opened my mind,” he told Variety. “When I went back to Uruguay, a.