Anna is the one in the middle of the photo.

Mónica and Ramón are actors.

They are the protagonists of the fictional story that has brought you here.

To a real-life scene that Anna lived through. A scene that perhaps you, or someone you love, has experienced.

Because more than 800 people a day have gone through it this year, in Spain alone.

A scene without makeup or spectators, where a person who thought they were healthy hears three words:

You have cancer

Anna Bacardit was 28 years old the day she heard those words.

The name and surname of her unwelcome co-star were: breast cancer with metastasis to the bones and liver.

And then, silence.

And a single, intrusive thought, disrupting the rhythm of a heart that loves music and cinema:

I won't make it to thirty.

She was scared but alive and made two decisions:

To go through the radiotherapy treatment, which would be tough.

To do it with music and a clear goal.

The crazy, musical idea that she and Elies (the one in the photo) had was to turn Anna's groundfloor terrace, one of Barcelona's many beautiful little corners, into the stage for 8 soundtracks with a very special audience.

Thanks to good friends and her job at an advertising and music video production company, “Ràdio Pati” stopped being an idea and became a series of 8 private, unrepeatable concerts.

They offset days of treatment and side effects with September nights full of life, opening up their groundfloor terrace to more than 300 people.

They weren’t just spectators, or "extras."

They were the main characters.

Because they didn't pay for a ticket in exchange for a good time listening to music. They gave real research hours to investigate complex cases of metastasis, like Anna's.

They joined in so that every day cancer steps back onto the scene, research won’t have stopped or waited.

To give time to one more life.

And this is where Anna's script crossed paths with that of IRB Barcelona and the metastasis research programme.

It was she who came in person, with her smile and that brave look in her eyes, to ask the questions and understand the answers before putting her time, her effort, and her community in our hands.

When she stepped into the IRB Barcelona laboratories, she saw that they weren't fiction, but as real and full of possibilities as what she herself was creating with “Ràdio Pati”.

The small private concerts in Anna's groundfloor terrace, along with the later ones on larger stages, brought more than €20,000 directly to the laboratories investigating metastases— thanks to the 750 protagonists of a soundtrack made of generosity and action, including both those who attended and those who collaborated without attending.

The good news was that Anna successfully completed the treatment and they were able to remove the primary tumour.

But just a year later, it has returned.

The metastasis has slipped back into her script.

And Anna is moving forward, with the same strength and commitment that led her to open her groundfloor terrace and bring people together. And she will continue to do so.

She remains just as convinced of those two decisions she made after first hearing “it's cancer”:

Go through the treatment and bring people together in support of research.

Because research continues too. For her and for everyone who today needs time to keep writing scenes of life.

And she has once again made a wild, creative idea possible— one that’s even more open to everyone.

The short film that brought you here.

It was created for free by her colleagues at the production company CANADA, a team of generous people, with a shared goal: to reach even more generous people.

People who, like the 750 who filled her groundfloor terrace on those summer nights, will decide to play a role in curing cancer today.

A real and tangible role. Not big or small.
 

If you are one of them and have come this far, Anna has a message for you.