Gael García Bernal perfectly remembers the moment he decided to dedicate himself to cinema. He was filming Y tú mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001), while he and Diego Luna, the film's other protagonist, were carrying some boxes with cameras and other filming equipment along a beach. Suddenly, they said to each other: “This cinema thing is great, isn't it? We should dedicate ourselves to doing this.” And with that unconscious optimism of youth, they promised each other they would do it together. And so they did: they founded a production company and a festival, and above all, they remained good friends. “We continue to work together and have a very close relationship,” the actor explained this Saturday in Palma. “I thought it was the most normal thing in the world, to have a great friendship and, at the same time, a good working relationship, but over the years I’ve discovered that it’s not very common.”

The Atlàntida Film Fest is the mother of all online festivals. Organized as always by Filmin, it has not lost the spirit with which it was born fifteen years ago: to discover unreleased auteur cinema programmed at major international festivals – and from our own country – and to recover the work of established filmmakers. Since 2016, it has combined the online edition with a face-to-face version in Palma, the Atlàntida Mallorca Film Fest, which this year will receive such illustrious visitors as David Lowery, Alexander Desplat, Gael García Bernal, Javier Bardem, and Victoria Luengo. Both editions kick off this Friday, but while the in-person festival lasts a week, the online version allows you to see the 91 films in the program – 65 of which are new to the State – until August 24.