Are Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna any good at football in real life?

Carlos Cuaron: I cannot say they are the worst players... but they are not as good as Rudo and Cursi! We all play in the same Saturday league, although they don't play that often because they're always working or touring. They used to play in a team that I founded 23 years ago. We just have fun.

How much of the salty banter between Gael and Diego is ab-libbed?

CC: It's all scripted. There's very little improv, because we didn't need it. Maybe only two or three bits. I was looking for naturalness and the dynamic these two guys have together is just amazing.

Why did you decide not to shoot the football scenes?

CC: When I was writing the script, I knew didn't want to make a sports movie. I was very clear that I wanted to make a sibling rivalry story. So when I was writing the script, the football was getting in the way of the drama. One day, I saw Michael Haneke's Funny Games, which is probably the most violent film I've ever seen -- but the violence is off camera. When I finished watching the film, I said, 'Hey, that's what I have to do.' Haneke gave me this solution.

Gael Garcia Bernal in Rudo and Cursi

Why haven't been any great football films?

CC: Sports like baseball or baseball are easy to dramatise, because all of them have a pause and that helps with the tension. Football never stops. I'm a football fan. I believe in the beauty of the game. If you are a fan, you have two choices. Go to the stadium, where you see the whole beauty of it. Or stay at home, watch the beautiful moves on the slo-mo cameras. Don't go to the cinema, because you won't see it there.

So did you use the penalty kicks as your action scenes?

CC: Exactly. The only moment football really stops is with a penalty kick -- and that is a moment that is really dramatic. A penalty kick becomes a Western duel. It's two guys facing each other. Destiny and potential death, whether metaphorical or literal. That's why in the penalty kick at the end of the film, I shot it like an homage to the Sergio Leone Westerns I saw when I was a kid, especially The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

Your brother, Alfonso, produced Rudo and Cursi. What do you think is his best film?

CC: I think Children Of Men is just amazing. I'm not a Harry Potter fan but I enjoyed Azkaban. I did Y Tu Mama Tambien with him and I think it's a beautiful movie. But when he says that A Little Princess is his most personal film, I know that it is. It was our first feature. Whenever we talk about it, I tell him, 'We were so unconscious. We knew shit, man!' I didn't even know how scripts were written! I hope I could do that again. But how can you recapture that freshness? I think Francois Truffaut said that a director's first film is his best because it is his purest. And that's probably true.

What's next for you? Something in Hollywood, maybe?

CC: I have an agent in Hollywood and he's looking for material. If I get the offer and I feel I relate to that material, I will do it. I would love to do a horror film, a thriller, a tearjerker... I like diversity. I would just like to sustain my sense of humour!