Alfonso Cuarón Orozco (US: /kwɑːˈroʊn/ kwar-OHN; Spanish: [alˈfonso kwaˈɾon] ^ⓘ; born 28 November 1961) is a Mexican filmmaker. His accolades include four Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and seven BAFTA Awards.

Cuarón made his feature film debut with the romantic comedy Sólo con tu pareja (1991), and directed the film adaptations A Little Princess (1995), and Great Expectations (1998). His breakthrough came with the coming-of-age film Y tu mamá también (2001) which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He gained greater prominence for directing the fantasy film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), the dystopian drama Children of Men (2006), the science fiction drama Gravity (2013), and the semi-autobiographical drama Roma (2018). The latter two won him Academy Awards for Best Director. He also won Best Film Editing for Gravity and Best Cinematography for Roma.

Alfonso Cuarón Orozco was born 28 November 1961 in Mexico City, the son of Alfredo Cuarón, a doctor specializing in nuclear medicine, and Cristina Orozco, a pharmaceutical biochemist. He has a sister Christina, and two brothers; Carlos, also a filmmaker, and Alfredo, a conservation biologist.

Cuarón studied philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and filmmaking at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, a school within the same university. There he met the director Carlos Marcovich and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and they made what would be his first short film, Vengeance Is Mine. He was expelled from the school, and worried that he would never be employed in the film industry.

Cuarón began working on television in Mexico, first as a technician and then as a director. His television work led to assignments as an assistant director for several film productions including La Gran Fiesta (1985), Gaby: A True Story (1987) and Romero (1989). In 1991 he landed his first big-screen directorial assignment, Sólo con tu pareja, a sex comedy about a womanizing businessman (played by Daniel Giménez Cacho) who, after having sex with an attractive nurse, is fooled into believing he's contracted AIDS. In addition to writing, producing and directing, Cuarón co-edited the film with Luis Patlán. The film, which also starred cabaret singer Astrid Hadad and model/actress Claudia Ramírez (with whom Cuarón was linked between 1989 and 1993) was a big hit in Mexico. After this success, director Sydney Pollack hired Cuarón to direct an episode of Fallen Angels, a series of neo-noir stories produced for the Showtime premium cable network in 1993; other directors who worked on the series included Steven Soderbergh, Jonathan Kaplan, Peter Bogdanovich, and Tom Hanks. The episode was entitled, "Murder, Obliquely" (1993) starring Laura Dern, Alan Rickman, and Diane Lane.

In 1995, Cuarón released his first feature film produced in the United States, A Little Princess, an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic 1905 novel of the same name. The film received critical acclaim with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring, "[the film] is a bright, beautiful and enchantingly childlike vision", one that "draw[s] its audience into the wittily heightened reality of a fairy tale" and "takes enough liberties to re-invent rather than embalm Miss Burnett's assiduously beloved story". The film went on to receive two Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography and Best Production Design. Cuarón's next feature was also a literary adaptation, a modernized version of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert De Niro. The film received mixed reviews to negative reviews. Russell Smith of The Austin Chronicle did however praise the film writing, ". What's truly intriguing about this film, though, is the stylishness with which Cuaron (A Little Princess) reinvents Dickens' hoary, often-remade tale. This Great Expectations has a seductive, enchanting feel that has nothing to do with sweet, gauzy sentiments or calculatedly “magical” Hollywood imagery". Still, Great Expectations managed to earn $55 million at the global box office, surpassing its $25 million production budget.

In 2001, Cuarón found himself returning to Mexico with a Spanish-speaking cast to film Y tu mamá también, starring Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdú. It was a provocative and controversial road comedy about two sexually obsessed teenagers who take an extended road trip with an attractive married woman who is much older than they. The film's open portrayal of sexuality and frequent rude humor, as well as the politically and socially relevant asides, made the film an international hit and a major success with critics. The film was distributed through IFC in America allowing the film to collect $13.8 million in the United States, unparalleled at the time for Latin American films. Critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "It is clear Cuaron is a gifted director, and here he does his best work to date." Cuarón shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay with co-writer and brother Carlos Cuarón.

In 2004, Cuarón directed the third film in the successful Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Cuarón faced criticism at the time from some Harry Potter fans for his approach to the film, notably its tendency to take more creative liberties with the source material than its predecessors. However, author J. K. Rowling, who had seen and loved Cuarón's film Y tu mamá también, said that it was her personal favorite from the series so far. Critically, the film was also better received than the first two installments, with some critics remarking its new tone and for being the first Harry Potter film to truly capture the essence of the novels. It has been subsequently rated by audience polls and critics as the best of the movie franchise series. The film earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score for John Williams.