Two-time Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu premiered Digger, starring Tom Cruise, at the Royal Film Performance, the Film and Television Charity's annual gala.
Two-time Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu premiered his film Digger at Leicester Square in the West End on Tuesday 22 September 2026. The screening was the Royal Film Performance, the Film and Television Charity’s annual fundraising gala.
Iñárritu was born in Mexico City in 1963 and was expelled from school at sixteen. He worked cargo boats to Europe and Africa instead. Seeing Yılmaz Güney’s Yol on those travels, he later said, turned him toward film.
Amores Perros, Babel, Birdman and The Revenant followed. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Birdman in 2014 and The Revenant in 2015. He was the third director to win in consecutive years after John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
The Film and Television Charity has staged the Royal Film Performance 72 times since 1946, when it began as a royal screening for King George VI. It is the industry’s largest single fundraising night, and the money supports film and television workers in hardship.
Senior royals attended, and the cast walked the Leicester Square carpet. Digger, from Iñárritu’s original screenplay, stars Tom Cruise alongside Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons. It reached British cinemas on 2 October.