The founders of Cha Cha Cha Films, from left, Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Guillermo del Toro, bring their global perspective to filmmaking.

By LARRY ROHTER


MEXICO CITY - Cha Cha Cha Films is the name of the new production company started by Mexico’s three most successful and acclaimed directors: Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Guillermo del Toro. But don’t go looking for an office or a telephone number here, or anywhere else for that matter, because you won’t find one.

That’s not just because of a dislike for bureaucracy and unnecessary overhead. After scoring a series of box office hits and Oscar nominations and awards in recent years with movies like “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”(Mr. Cuaron),“Babel” (Mr. Gonzalez Inarritu) and“Pan’s Labyrinth”(Mr. del Toro) the three directors now have their pick of bigbudget, studio-supported projects to take them all over the world.

But that means the Three Amigos, as Hollywood has taken to calling them, don’t spend as much time with one another as they would like. So an official business relationship, with lots of phone calls and e-mail messages flying back and forth across the planet, seemed the best way to continue the conversation about cinema they have been having since they were starting out and first met here two decades ago.

“We don’t have a mission statement,”said Mr. del Toro, 44, who also has directed“Hellboy”and“The Devil’s Backbone”and is now at work on“The Hobbit”in New Zealand.“Right now we can do anything, make a movie in French or in Spanish, together or apart, producing or not producing, helping with the writing and pingponging ideas. It’s more like a virtual company than a big development company.”

For Latin America cinema the Cha Cha Cha experiment also represents a new way of engaging and relating to Hollywood. Directors of earlier generations, like Glauber Rocha and Ruy Guerra, to cite two examples from Brazil, often defined their identities quite vocally in opposition to Hollywood and took pride in operating outside the studio system.

But the Cha Cha Cha directors and their contemporaries, who include Brazilians like Walter Salles and Fernando Meirelles, move easily in and out of Hollywood, using the studio system when it seems to suit a particular project but going elsewhere for financing and marketing when it does not.

“These guys are Mexican through and through and embrace their heritage and everything that comes with that,”David Linde, a chairman of Universal Pictures, said of the Three Amigos.“But they have a global perspective, much as I hate that phrase. It fascinates them to tell stories in Mexico, Spain, the U.K. and the United States because what drives them, quite simply, is an interest in what it means to be human.”

The first film released under the Cha Cha Cha banner is“Rudo y Cursi,”or“Tough and Corny,”which the three partners produced but did not direct. It is a bittersweet comedy about two brothers of humble origin who become big league Mexican soccer stars almost overnight. Spoiled by their success, they see their careers collapse just as rapidly.

The brothers Tato and Beto Verdusco are played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, probably best known for their breakout roles in“Y Tu Mama Tambien.”That film, nominated for an Academy Award in 2002 for best original screenplay, was directed by Mr. Cuaron, 47, who wrote it with his brother Carlos, 42. Carlos Cuaron makes his feature-length debut as a director in

“Rudo y Cursi”in what can only be called a family setting.“Rudo y Cursi,”which had its premiere in Mexico and will be released worldwide this summer and fall, is set in the world of sports and examines issues like corruption and celebrity, but“this is really a film about brotherhood,”Carlos Cuaron said in an interview here. That seems an appropriate assessment not just because of the plot and Alfonso Cuaron’s involvement as a co-producer, but also because Mr. del Toro and Mr. Gonzalez Inarritu, 45, are“like a pair of older brothers to me,”Carlos said.

That means they are willing to offer tough love to help their younger sibling get his directing career off on the right foot.“I don’t think you can find producers who are more demanding than these three, and in a very positive way,”Mr. Luna said.