Diego Luna: Theatre is My Religion, and Cinema is the Mirror of Society

His career spans almost four decades: from Mexican television series and independent cinema to major Hollywood productions and one of the most recognisable contemporary television franchises–Star Wars.

He arrived in Sarajevo as an experienced artist who has been performing since the age of seven, but also with the conviction that the essence of cinema cannot be found in fame, awards or numbers, but in what happens between the filmmaker and the audience.

At his masterclass, held today at the Festival Center (Bosnian Cultural Center), he spoke about acting, directing, producing, theatre, the fear of failure, collaboration and the social responsibility of artists. He also spoke about Sarajevo, a city whose energy, as he said, strongly reminded him of moments from his own past.

He arrived in Sarajevo with his son. Seeing the city through his son’s eyes, he said, allowed him to experience the Festival differently.

“These are very exciting days. I’m here with my son, seeing Sarajevo through his eyes. I find the energy and the welcoming feeling very similar to home,” Luna said.

For him, Sarajevo is not simply a festival destination. Through conversations, encounters and stories he heard in the city, he was reminded of his own generation and of a period when he, too, began to look at the world differently.

Luna spoke about how deeply he was moved by the fact that the beginning of the war in Sarajevo remains part of the city’s collective memory. History has always interested him, he says, but his experience of Sarajevo evoked something truly personal. His own nineties were a time of change, too. A time of political awakening and of confronting violence in Mexico that society had long tried to ignore.

“There are parallels,” he said, speaking about Mexico and Bosnia and Herzegovina. “In Mexico, we were confronted with violence that we wanted to ignore. And then we woke up.”

At that point, the conversation naturally moved towards what Luna considers to be one of the most important functions of cinema. It is not necessarily about having to offer solutions, he believes, but about creating a space in which we can look at the things we run away from from a different perspective: “Use the screen as a mirror. To challenge who we are. Without distractions.”

 

For Luna, cinema is not a way to escape reality, but a way of returning to it with different eyes.

Luna began acting as a child, having been raised in an artistic family. His father, Alejandro Luna, was one of Mexico’s most prominent production designers, while his mother, Fiona Alexander, was a costume designer. The stage and film sets were therefore a natural environment for Luna from very early on. Before international fame, he worked in Mexico for years, and a major turning point in his career came in 2001 when he starred alongside Gael García Bernal and Maribel Verdú in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También.

The film became an international success, while Luna and García Bernal emerged as two of the new faces of Mexican and Latin American cinema. Their friendship, which began in childhood, later developed into a long-standing artistic partnership. 

His father, production designer Alejandro Luna, would often leave him at the theatre while he was working. For Luna, theatre remains much more than a profession. “Theatre keeps me sane. It keeps me grounded. Theatre is my church, my religion.”

That is why he tells young actors to regularly go to the theatre, even when their careers are centred on film. The world of the film industry, he says, can easily “consume” a person. 

Luna spoke about working with directors from whom he learned, particularly Alfonso Cuarón. What he learned from the best filmmakers was not simply how to shoot a scene or manage a crew. More importantly, he learned that directing is not a dictatorship of a single idea.

Luna’s understanding of loss began long before he became an actor. When he was only four years old, his mother, Fiona Alexander, was killed in a traffic accident. That early loss left a mark that became more than just a painful chapter in his personal biography. Over time, it also shaped his artistic understanding of people, their relationships, and how they deal with pain.

His personal experience may also help explain what Luna said during the Masterclass about cinema as a space that brings us back to community. For him, art is not an escape from pain, but a way of sharing it, looking at it from another perspective, and finding something that reconnects us.

During the Masterclass, the audience was also shown a clip from Y Tu Mamá También, the film that transformed Luna’s career a quarter of a century ago. The audience reacted with laughter to his remark that throughout his career he has often been cast in erotic roles.

“Eros is the way forward,” he joked.

After watching the scene, he admitted that he should probably watch the film again. Because Luna, it seems, also wants to look at his own work from a different perspective.

And that brings him back to Sarajevo. Speaking about his experience of the previous festival evening, about people laughing and crying together, Luna reminded the audience why film festivals exist in the first place: “What I felt last night was how much we are connected and how much we can do together. To laugh together, to cry together–only then we are close to each other.”

He congratulated Sarajevo for keeping the Festival alive. And then, in his characteristic tone, Luna added that perhaps everything could be made simpler: by talking, having a drink and loving each other.

That sentence may best summarise his entire Masterclass.