Director Cuaron made his name with the film Y Tu Mama Tambien

Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron has directed the third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, due out in UK cinemas on Monday. BBC News Online looks at his career so far.

Born in Mexico City, Alfonso Cuaron made his first film, the popular comedy Solo con tu pareja (Love in the Time of Hysteria) in his native Mexico, at the age of 30.

He left Mexico soon after "for artistic survival", disillusioned by the government's stranglehold on the country's movie industry.

His first English language film was the family film, A Little Princess in 1995.

Based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess tells the story of a young girl who is sent to live in a New York boarding school when her widowed father enlists for war.

Though hugely underrated, The Little Princess did not go unnoticed among critics. Visually stunning, it saw Cuaron draw moving and intelligent performances from his young cast.

Mexican talent

Sadly, his modern adaptation of Great Expectations, which followed in 1998, shared many of the former film's artistic qualities but lacked its magic.

An updated version of the Dickens' classic featuring the heavyweight talents of Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke, it failed to make any impact at the box office.

By that stage, Cuaron was part of a rising tide of Mexican film talent that was making Hollywood executives sit up and take notice.

In the the late 1990s, Cuaron co-founded the Tequila Gang production company with fellow Mexicans Laura Esquivel and Mimic director Guillermo del Toro, whose comic book fantasy Hellboy is due out this year.

Y Tu Mama Tambien followed two youths discovering their sexuality

But it was 2001's Y Tu Mama Tambien, a rites-of-passage drama about two teenage boys who embark on a relationship with an older woman, which brought Cuaron international attention - and box office glory.

It also won him and his brother Carlos, with whom he co-wrote the screenplay, an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.

'Identity'

Unremittingly sexy, it was released in Mexico with an 18 rating, a move which so infuriated Cuaran that he sued the Mexican government over its ratings policy.

Given its bold eroticism, it came as quite a surprise when Warner Bros approached Cuaron about directing the third Harry Potter movie - not least to the director himself, who had neither read the books nor seen the films.

But having read the books, Cuaron maintains that the two films are not so different thematically.

"Harry Potter is about finding your own identity, and so is Y Tu Mama," he told the New York Times.

With its protagonists teetering on the brink of adolescence, the third Potter film echoes many of the teenage sensibilites seen in Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien.

But unlike that sun-kissed comedy, the current Potter is an altogether darker film - sinister, with a pervasive sense of menace.