Film maker swaps Harry Potter for childless world
From Silvia Aloisi

VENICE—Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron leaves the adventures of young wizard Harry Potter behind him with his new film "Children of Men," a bleak tale of an apocalyptic world in which humans can no longer have babies.
The film, vying for the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, is set in 2027 in a futuristic, fortress-like London besieged by illegal immigrants, Islamic militants and a cult-like covert group plotting an uprising.
The world is in flames, heavily armed soldiers man the British capital, refugees are herded into deportation camps and it has been nearly 19 years since the last baby was born.
Against the backdrop of violence and despair a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant African woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help save humankind from extinction.
Starring Michael Caine, Clive Owen and Julianne Moore, the film provides a dark vision of a not-too-distant future, and Cuaron said it was meant as a wake up call to the world of today.
"We never aimed to do a science fiction film and try to speculate on the world of the future. We used the future as a convention but we wanted you to feel in the present," Cuaron told reporters after a press screening on Sunday.
"Sometimes we forget that we live in a very comfortable bubble," said the director, whose previous movies include "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and the critically acclaimed "Y tu mama tambien."
In one of the most impressive and unsettlingly realistic sequences toward the end of the film, London plunges into urban warfare and soldiers fight street battles with insurgents holed up in crumbling buildings.
Cuaron said he did not have to look too far to imagine how that scene should look.
"Some of the concept artists when they started working on the film ... they were so disappointed because they undusted all these amazing science-fiction-like machines and cars and buildings and stuff," Cuaron said. "Then I came with my own pile of stuff that I wanted to do and there were photos of Bosnia, Iraq, Palestine and Somalia," he said.
Clive Owen, last seen in Spike Lee's "Inside Man," plays the former activist who is awoken from a state of numbness by Kee, the pregnant immigrant who needs his help to flee to safety.
"It was unusual to play such a big part in a movie, be in every scene and at the same time be so passive," he said, adding he was a big fan of the "highly original, super-talented" Cuaron.
"Choosing this film was the easiest thing because he was very, very high in my list of directors I would love to work with," he added.
The film is due for theatrical release in Britain later this month and in December in the United States.