Alejandro González Iñárritu has become one of his generation's major auteurs, and Babel is widely considered the film that brought him more widespread attention. Upon its release, the film was praised for the way it superimposes different cultures, storylines, and psychological portraits on top of one another. In this superimposition, Iñárritu seeks to show the intermingling of global and personal crisis, and illuminate the pitfalls of modern globalization, xenophobia, and American essentialism.
Babel was shot with a $25 million budget in Ibaraki, Tokyo, El Carrizo, Sonora, Tijuana, Ouarzazate, Taguenzalt, San Diego, San Ysidro, and Drumhelier in Alberta, Canada. Photography began in May of 2005 and ended in December. In response to the complications involved in shooting such an expensive and multifaceted film, Iñárritu was quoted as saying of the shoot, "As a production, we were running very close circumstances to what the film was about, the lack of communication, the impossibilities of dialogue."
Following the shooting of Babel, Iñárritu had a falling out with his collaborator and cowriter, Guillermo Arriaga over the authorship of their previous collaboration, 21 Grams. Insisting that he was the primary author of the film, Iñárritu forbade Arriaga from attending the screening of Babel at Cannes, even though he had written the script.
