By: Ashmar Mandou
Parisian Diego Buñuel, host and director of the acclaimed series, “Don’t Tell My Mother,” lives quite an intriguing life. He has traveled to the Congo, Iraq, China, and North Korea uncovering the complexities of human emotion and border relations, a passion Buñuel attributes to his insatiably, curious nature. “I have always wanted to tell stories and do them in a way that hasn’t been done before. I guess my desire to tell stories came from listening to my family tell stories and just watching particular shows growing up,” said Diego Buñuel, whose series “Don’t Tell My Mother” can now be seen on the National Geographic channel. “It is always satisfying for me to just pack my bags and visit a country that has a complex history and really showcase the humanity and inspire change along the way.”
No stranger to the fast-paced, unpredictable lifestyle, Buñuel, whose grandfather is renowned Spanish film director Luis Buñuel, bought a one-way ticket to Chicago to attend Northwestern University without ever having visited the campus. “I remember that day clearly,” laughed Buñuel. “Instead of attending the usual Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to give journalism school a try. After a friend of mine told me about Northwestern University I decided right then that was where I needed to be.”
Although most college-bound students would have been terrified at the thought of migrating to an entirely different county, Buñuel embraced every moment. “There I was, this 18-year old kid with no family in Chicago, so far away from what I was familiar with…I must have been crazy, but I loved it,” said Buñuel. “I loved that time in my life.” After graduating in 1997, Buñuel took an internship with the Chicago Tribune before moving to Florida to handle the police beat for the Sun-Sentinel in Miami. It wasn’t until Buñuel worked for NATO’s weekly armed forces newspaper did he discover his true calling. “I cannot even begin to describe the life lessons I took away with me working as a war-correspondent in those 10-months,” said Buñuel, who was recruited by the French military to serve in Sarajevo where he travelled all over the war-torn Balkans. “Receiving the chance to be in the trenches with some of the soldiers, to be able to witness another side to a place that was ravaged by war, really served as the catalyst to ‘Don’t Tell My Mother,’” said Buñuel.
“Don’t Tell My Mother” is an hour program that criss-crosses the globe as Buñuel stops in growing mega-cities – some beleaguered by the overwhelming demands that come along with housing millions of residents. But all these cities are riding high on the hopes of newcomers arriving daily in search of opportunity. Whether Buñuel is spending the night in one of the most dangerous parts of São Paolo with a group of graffiti artists inspiring radical social change, dressing in drag in Dhaka or drag racing through Johannesburg, Buñuel takes delight in the opportunity to reveal the heart and soul of each city. “I recall one story that stood, which is hard because there are so many, but there was this Muslim worker in Pakistan, making sex toys to be shipped off to the United States,” laughed Buñuel. “I thought, ‘wow, this is interesting,’ and when I asked him if it conflicted with his religion, he said, ‘regardless of what I think, I still have to feed my family at the end of the day.’ This was a special moment for me because no matter where you travel, or what views you hold about a particular issue or religion, at the heart of every country you will always find people trying to survive.”
Buñuel’s passion for storytelling did not go unnoticed. In 2003, Buñuel received the Scoop Awards, Grand Jury Prize Award for Desert Kings, an hour-long report on the U.S. intervention in Iraq and in 2009 received the Banff World Television Grand Prize Award for “Don’t Tell My Mother I am in Iran” episode. “I feel very blessed that I get to do what I do. I get to meet interesting people everyday, I get to learn, and stay out of my comfort zone, and find different ways to tell a story,” said Buñuel. But no matter where Buñuel travels to next, he will always find himself missing a particular city. “Chicago,” laughed Buñuel. “Chicago, I miss you. You will always have a special place in my heart.” If you would like to learn more about, “Don’t Tell My Mother,” visit www.natgeotv.com.
