Bad Education tells the story of two friends and first loves and the sexual abuse they endure at a strict Salesian Catholic school. The complex narrative skilfully dramatizes how childhood events shape one’s adult life and relationships. In the eighties, young gay film director Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez) is visited by his old school friend Ignacio Rodríguez (Gael García Bernal). Ignacio gives Enrique a short story to read; it begins by recounting the childhood experiences of the two men, who had suffered through Catholic school together in the sixties but were separated because of the jealous love of Father Manolo, the principal. Ignacio’s story goes on to invent a fictional reunion in the seventies, in which one boy is imagined as a suburban family man, the other a drug-addicted transvestite. Enrique decides that this story part memory, part fantasy will form the basis of his new film