CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Diego Luna’s return to directing – and his premiere of his fourth film, Ceniza en la Boca, at Cannes Film Festival – became something of an Y Tu Mama Tambien reunion. The film that made him a global star also gave him a lifelong friendship with director Alfonso Cuaron and co-star Gael Garcia Bernal. Both were present when Luna bowed his latest project in the Cannes Palais, Cuaron cheering on his protege and Bernal as executive producer on the film. Greg Williams captured him at the Martinez Hotel before he premiered his project.
A timely character study, his film tracks a pair of Mexican siblings abandoned by their mother (Adriana Paz) when she departs to Spain to escape the violence of her hometown. Eight years later, the children, 21 year-old Lucila (Anna Diaz) and teen Diego (Sergio Bautista), follow her to Madrid where a life of economic hardship and xenophobia awaits. Based on Brenda Navarro’s 2022 novel, the movie follows the numerous low-paid jobs Lucila must take to scrape her rent together, the sly ways in which she is disenfranchised by her employers and how a dream of safety (financially and emotionally) is so often out of reach.
Though it may not be Luna’s own experience of working abroad (he’s appeared in Star Wars films and TV, found success and happiness), the story is somewhat personal. ‘It’s a beautiful story, hard and difficult, about migration from a perspective we don’t see much,’ Luna told Cannes. ‘My mother died when I was two, so the subject of parents not being around hits me profoundly.’ He told Variety that ‘often, we have to grow up to understand what our parents did for us or didn’t do for us’.
The film touches on a hot topic as Spain has become a gateway for Latin Americans into Europe during the Trump administration. It also explores the concept of home, how to mourn or honour a family member and the gig economy. Cannes is a familiar place for Luna to debut his film; he first attended in 2003 as an actor in Soldados de Salamina, and has returned for Mister Lonely in 2007, as director of Abel in 2010 and as a Un Certain Regard jury member in 2016. Ceniza en la Boca has been bought by Netflix for Spanish-speaking territories and will bow in 2027.
Ceniza en la Boca premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival and will debut on Netflix in 2027
