This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
Turning Point: In September, Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, was convicted of attempting a coup to overturn the results of the 2022 Brazilian election.
One of the great pleasures of fiction is that it lets us explore the mystery that shrouds reality. That crack you can just barely see through is a space that fiction can imagine and represent in infinite ways.
But if you are interested in that elusive space — in the mystery surrounding human behavior and experience — you face a particular challenge in today’s world, where reality has become so extreme that fiction runs the risk of coming up short.
Consider how our society is reflected by the characters in power: politicians who seem to govern from a stage, openly lying, reacting to criticism with rage and exercising their power without the slightest trace of inhibition. Our reality has become reality TV.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former president of Mexico, spent much of his mandate performing a novelty: governing from a seemingly endless live press conference. He would announce the day’s agenda, attack the press and try to solve, in real time, the problems afflicting society, giving voice to, or ignoring, whatever suited his needs. He effectively eliminated the middle man that was the media, speaking directly to his followers with no filters in place, on a circuit where optics and superficiality were rewarded.
And in a rapidly changing media landscape, López Obrador is an almost tame example of the absurd and over the top figures who have capitalized on their nebulous relationship with truth and fiction.
President Donald Trump, of course, is one. He revived his career on television and has transformed his presidency into a nonstop spectacle. Turning facts and reality on their head, he has used both the power of the White House and his own social network to attack any person or outlet he sees as his enemy.
In Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro — whose government has been accused of crimes against humanity — uses multiple television shows to give a sunny view of his administration. And President Javier Milei of Argentina first came to prominence as an angry, theatrical pundit, later campaigning with a chain saw and using social media to channel his rage at journalists and others.
The list goes on. Former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, who has been convicted of attempting a coup following his country’s national election in 2022, for years leveled baseless attacks on Brazil’s electoral system in speeches, livestreams and social media posts. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador — who United States prosecutors believe made a corrupt deal with leaders of the MS-13 gang while also trading favors under the table with the Trump administration — has long run on the power of his own brand, calling himself the “coolest dictator in the world.” And in 2023, after Sheynnis Palacios of Nicaragua was crowned Miss Universe, her country’s authoritarian government instituted a crackdown fit for a soap opera, claiming that Palacios’s initial selection to represent Nicaragua was part of an “anti-patriotic conspiracy” against President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
Fiction would have a hard time imagining situations more absurd than what we confront in the news every day. There is no crack to peer into — no mystery — because there seems to be no shame or fear of any possible consequence.
Maybe the only useful fiction, if we’re talking about politics, is about the citizen, the person who chooses his leader. A fiction that examines and confronts the society that has put power into the hands of would-be dictators.
In making “Andor,” we felt it was essential to reflect on the past, to show what happens when a society faced with authoritarianism and repression wakes up. To identify that moment when people say, “enough.”
Our aim was to portray the social and political climate of this distant galaxy during what the series calls “the rise of the rebellion.”
For the show’s 24-episode arc, Tony Gilroy, the creator, referenced a collage of recent and not-so-recent historical events to show the human face of revolution: the organizing, the challenges and the sacrifice. And without any prompting from us, “Andor” proved reflective of the present, of the political environment of here and now. When done well, science fiction is an excellent tool for exactly that: channeling the concerns of the present.
That line, between fiction and reality, is complex. On the one hand, there are those who seek to turn reality into a fiction that supports their ideological convictions. On the other, there are those of us who see creative fictions as experiences that can be just as true as any real event.
Since I was young, film has been a gateway that has helped me understand the world. I began to hone my taste for cinema as a teenager, and my curiosity drew me to movies from different periods, all with an element of social or political critique. I watched them on my father’s VHS player — first behind his back and later with him. We discussed and argued over Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” which allowed my father to talk to me about the Cold War and ease my worries about the bomb; “All the President’s Men,” directed by Alan J. Pakula, which tells the story of the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon’s downfall; “La Cucaracha,” directed by Ismael Rodríguez with photography by the great Gabriel Figueroa, and starring María Félix and Emilio “El Indio” Fernández, which takes place during the Mexican Revolution.
In those contexts, fiction could be said to exist in relation to a reality that deserves to be questioned — a reality that, from the narrating perspective, deserves to be revealed in ways you alone might not. But maybe the real question is: Why do we need fiction as a mediator in order to help us understand certain realities?
The escapism that is gathering as a community in the isolation of a movie theater, immersing yourself in a story told from a different perspective and experiencing a film without interruptions is, in fact, an opportunity for transformation. When you let your guard down, a story that had seemed so remote can suddenly move you and reflect something personal and private. In that moment, the experience of that fiction becomes yours, and it will stay with you forever. When cinema is critical, when it is insightful and political, the experience is a win-win.
Diego Luna is an actor, director and producer known for his roles in “Andor” and “Y Tu Mamá También.”
This essay was translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary.
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