Gael García Makes Films Without Thinking About the Algorithm

Gael García Bernal does not want the algorithm deciding what cinema should be. Twenty-five years after Y tu mamá también launched his career alongside Diego Luna under Alfonso Cuarón, he says filmmaking still demands freedom, even when that freedom brings fear and financial uncertainty.

The actor, director and producer spoke in Venice, the city where his film career took off. He acknowledged that filmmakers have long struggled to secure budgets and exhibition space. In the digital era, he said, they face another battle: an algorithm that determines what works and what becomes viral.

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Because when a film is born solely to respond to what we supposedly want to consume, it risks becoming instantly irrelevant: we watch it and forget it the next day.

García rejects the idea of making films according to a formula designed to satisfy supposed consumer demand. “Because when a film is born solely to respond to what we supposedly want to consume, it risks becoming instantly irrelevant: we watch it and forget it the next day,” he said.

What he seeks instead is transcendence, ritual and community. He also recognizes the unavoidable anxiety behind creative freedom, the question of whether a film will work. Experience has given him some distance. “We’re only making a film, nothing happens if it doesn’t work,” he told El Universal. He then added an important qualification: if the film is good, things do happen.

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We’re only making a film, nothing happens if it doesn’t work.

As an example, García recalled making Amores perros, when few people cared that the film was being shot and the world continued turning. Yet he said it is now impossible to understand Latin America without films such as Iñárritu’s work, City of God and Nine Queens.

García’s latest project, ¡Hombre al agua!, casts him as Camilo, a Cuban lifeguard who saves a Mexican businessman and becomes entangled in a corruption network. Ricky Martin makes a special appearance and, with Diego Luna, serves as a producer. García said the film exists because a group of people wanted to make it even when potential financiers were unconvinced. “But as viewers we also believe there is a real appetite for seeing these crazy, unruly, free and loving stories,” he said.

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But as viewers we also believe there is a real appetite for seeing these crazy, unruly, free and loving stories.