'Hombre al agua': Gael García Bernal's Venice and TIFF Film, Cast, Story and Review

Gael García Bernal directs and stars in "Hombre al agua" ("man overboard"), his third feature as a director after Déficit (2007) and Chicuarotes (2019). It world premiered in the Spotlight section of the Venice film festival before its North American debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The story

García Bernal plays Camilo, a lonely Cuban lifeguard on Varadero Beach who saves Mexican business scion Don Abel (Jorge Salinas) from drowning. A grateful Abel brings him to Mexico, and Camilo marries his daughter Juana (Esmeralda Pimentel), a professional athlete. He ends up on the family estate in Yucatán raising their baby and running a factory with a monopoly on zip ties, until he realizes his new life is part of a carefully orchestrated plan.

His marriage frays as Juana grows close to Fabiana (Débora Nascimento), a Brazilian actress she is training to play a pole vaulter. After Abel is hit by a truck, he quietly asks Camilo to look after his pregnant Argentine mistress, Silvana (Natalia Oreiro), whom Camilo hides on the estate, all while he has to lay off factory workers.

"I also wanted to explore the crisis of masculinity, the roles of men and women within a couple, and the experience of separation," García Bernal told Variety, "through comedy, with a kind of meta-cinematic playfulness."

Cast

Gael García Bernal, Esmeralda Pimentel, Jorge Salinas, Débora Nascimento, Natalia Oreiro, Anna Díaz and Manuel García Rulfo, with a cameo from Ricky Martin, who is also an executive producer alongside Diego Luna and others.

How it was made

García Bernal began writing the film eight or nine years ago with Argentine playwright Mariano Pensotti. It was shot mainly in Yucatán, near Mérida and on a beach at Sisal, with scenes in Mexico City and three days in Havana. Financing was the biggest hurdle: every attempt to cast a Cuban actor as Camilo made investor interest drop. The film was produced by La Corriente del Golfo, the company García Bernal founded with Diego Luna, with Cárcava Cine and Stacy Perskie's Redrum.

First reviews

The Hollywood Reporter called it a midlife-crisis dramedy whose themes of fatherhood, masculinity and Mexico's class divide stay "largely on the surface" amid its mounting chaos, while expecting it to find traction in Latin America more easily than with international audiences.

Sources · Variety; The Hollywood Reporter review from Venice, September 2026.