Gael Garcia Bernal on Documentary Film

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Gael Garcia Bernal
Gael Garcia BernalPhotography by Philip Sinden

Acclaimed Mexican actor and director Gael Garcia Bernal takes time out from jury duty at the Marrakech International Film Festival to talk to AnOther about his obsession with documentary film…

"I love documentary. I think it’s really important to have cinema that makes you think, that provokes debate, and in which you can see yourself reflected. Documentaries capture fragments of reality and piece them together to reveal the world. Thе collective experience of watching a fantastic film together in a room is a transcendental moment that will never die.

In 2005 myself, my friend Diego Luna — we made Y Tu Mamá También together, but I’ve known him since we were little — and our producer friend Pablo Cruzput together a travelling documentary festival called Ambulante, which means street vendor in Spanish. Next year it will be six-years-old and it’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. Diego and I had this sense of responsibility to do something with all the attention we were getting from our acting. Ambulante was a way to give back. But also, honestly, to take. Because we get so much out of it.

I think it’s one of the few festivals that has a very good reason for being. We wanted to help promote quality Mexican documentary film-making. We wanted to bring documentaries to a wide audience. And we wanted to challenge the idea that some young people have of documentaries as boring. In the first festival, there were 19 films. This year there were 60 films and it lasted a week and a half in 17 cities. There has been a lot of collaboration with other festivals, cinemas and film clubs in England, Sweden, Cuba, Tanzania, El Salvador, Nicaragua, even Japan.

People are so grateful to see films from all over the world. It really is a great chance to know ‘the other’, you know, and therefore to know oneself. I think ultimately the best thing that can happen, not only for Mexican cinema but for cinema in general, is that it doesn’t acknowledge a nationality. Whenever I’m asked the question, ‘Do you support Mexican cinema?’, I always say ‘I support good films, I don’t care where they’re from'. I never went to see a ‘foreign film’ when I was a kid: films were films. For that matter, Casablanca and Jaws were foreign films! And I think little by little people are getting used to the idea of seeing films from around the world. Ambulante has already developed a very strong reception and a captive audience. When we started, people in Mexico were always calling documentaries ‘short films’. Not any more. Now they know what they are. Who would’ve thought?"

Acclaimed Mexican actor and director Gael Garcia Bernal takes time out from jury duty at the 10th International Film Festival of Marrakech to talk to AnOther about his obsession with documentary film.

Text by Louise Brealey