Nonetheless, Death of a President, raising various issues concerning security, liberty and the American way of life during the past five years, has gone on to win the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI) at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. Born in England, Range has lived and worked in the US for a number of years as a journalist. His directorial credits include The Day Britain Stopped (2003) and The Man Who Broke Britain (2004).

Why did you want to make this film?

Whenever there's a horrific event of any kind, any sort of national tragedy, there's a period of reflection. Imagining the assassination of President Bush is very striking. It's a very arresting way of saying: Where have we got to in the last five years? It struck me as a very provocative way of asking some questions about how the war on terror has been conduced, about the decision to invade Iraq, and providing a fresh refection on some of things that have happened in the last five years.

Why set it in Chicago?

Setting aside Kent State, the images of the Chicago Police Department pulling people off that statue in Grant Park, or beating people outside the Hilton on Michigan Avenue during the [1968] Democratic Convention - this is regarded by historians as the sort of moment when there was an awareness of how divisive the war in Vietnam had become. Chicago has been the scene of some huge anti-war demonstrations for the current conflict. So it felt appropriate to explore some of those [resonances].

Why set the date on October 19, 2007?

October 19 was a date when we could make some reasonable assumptions about the state of administration and the likely political agenda at the time. It's fair to say the situation in Iraq is unlikely to have improved dramatically by October 19. Obviously, President Bush is still in office. Some of the guesses we were making about the future have proved to be quite prescient. In the film, President Bush delivers a quite uncompromising message to North Korea and on the date the film was released in the UK, North Korea announced it had completed its first successful nuclear test. Bush was on our TV screen saying something very similar to what he said in 2003, so hopefully we're getting some things right.

When you were researching troubadours in the Mission District, did you find Carmelo and his peers were part of a diminishing working class?

Around the time I started the film, there was a scene in the Mission that was changing. It was around the time of the dot-com boom and there was a sense, as rents were going up, that it wasn't a place where working class folks could afford to live and work. I'm sure that was in my mind when I was beginning the project and that may have been part of the inspiration. Making a film from the subjective point of view of a working class guy, I was thinking - though the film didn't turn into this - I thought, "Maybe this could be a mariachi-eye view of the Mission and what's happening to it."

You held fast to the subjective aspects of the film and avoided veering into the political. You could have dealt with immigration issues, or post-NAFTA economic conditions, if you'd wanted to. Did you avoid politics because you thought you might be exploiting Carmelo's story to get to politics?

Yes. Ultimately, I was making a film about this man who's a musician for a living, and as I explored his life, the political ending up merging with the personal in a way that made me feel that I didn't need any polemical elements in the film. I liked the idea that I could let the political subtext simmer beneath the surface and allow the audience to consider the larger resonance of one person's plight. There's a lot of political documentary making that makes it clear the filmmaker has a strong point of view about this issue and why it's terrible. Not even necessarily telling us what to do about the issue, the film can allow the politics ride its surface. It was definitely a choice of mine to let the politics simmer and bubble. I love the idea that you feel you're watching a film about a personal story and you can't help but get some sort of political resonance.

Following two decades of steady work in European television, Holland enjoyed her first international art-house breakthrough with Europa Europa, an alternately harrowing and darkly comic World War II true story in which our resourceful Jewish hero evades Nazi capture by concealing the fact that he is circumcised. Mysteries of identity, faith and fate drive many of Holland's subsequent films, from the tense family drama Olivier, Olivier and her sly adaptation of Henry James's Washington Square to the stigmata-marked The Third Miracle (her first collaboration with Ed Harris) and Total Eclipse, her imaginative rhapsody on the turbulent lives and loves of 19th century French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine. Holland still specializes in TV dramas, directing episodes of The Wire and Cold Case, putting a much-needed fresh spin on the Gary Gilmore biopic Shot in the Heart, and bringing characteristic insight to A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, which humanized the murdered transgender teen for a mass audience.

With Copying Beethoven, Holland returns to the 19th century and finds the great composer (Harris, giving it his all) in his last days, drinking to excess and losing the last of his hearing while completing the Ninth Symphony and the final string quartets. Anna, a young, pluckish music student, comes to his aid as a copyist, improving his messy notations and challenging his authority in an amusing battle of creative ambition. Purists may scoff at Holland's depiction of Beethoven as a lusty lout, nicknamed "the beast," who arm-wrestles opponents at the local tavern, frightens nuns and moons his assistant, yet the director's masterful mis-en-scene and particularly stunning use of candlelight make the film an ode to joy. The soundtrack is quite good, too. I spoke with Holland days before the film's US release.

The three caballeros have made their respective marks not simply in Hollywood but on the international filmmaking stage, with Cuarón as the elder statesman of the trio. He was the first to make his feature debut, a black comedy about machismo, AIDS, and middle class mores called Sólo con tu pareja, which struck a chord with young Mexican audiences and became the number one film in the country in 1992; and he was the first to cross over into Hollywood with his magical screen version of A Little Princess, a tender ode to childhood imagination and innocent optimism.

His career since has shown a refreshing diversity, from the sexy and unapologetically raw Y tu mamá también, a coming of age drama of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll with an eye-opening undercurrent of socio-political discovery, to the family friendly Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film in the hit fantasy series about the famous boy wizard. What remains consistent is a vivid visual approach, different for each film but always vibrant and alive, a compassion for his characters and an empathy with youth, especially children and teenagers. "If I care to connect with anybody, it's young people," he confesses. "It's a selfish thing, because they keep you relevant."

His latest film, Children of Men, takes his career into unexpected - but decidedly relevant - territory. Based on a novel by P.D. James, it's set in a world where two decades of infertility have created a mood of hopelessness as devastating and destructive as a nuclear holocaust. The bleak, impoverished near future could be today reflected through a grimy, distorted mirror, but true to Cuarón's sensibility, the film becomes a road movie powered by the spark of hope.

The interview was conducted in early December in the midst of Cuarón's press tour in support of Children of Men. Though the gray flecks running through his unruly hair and scruffy beard gave away his age, his energy and attitude made him seem younger than his 45 years. Easy to laugh, eager to talk and passionate when discussing his work, he was a blast to interview, but he must have been hell on publicists. My interview started late; by the time it was over, he was an hour behind schedule. "Don't worry, we can go a little longer," he assured me after I got the five-minute warning. It wasn't even noon. His cell phone beeping with calls from Del Toro and Iñárritu didn't help his schedule, but it honestly felt more like a benediction than an intrusion when the director of Babel interrupted the conversation for a brief chat.