Outstanding Basque film films at the Film Festival

The festival has selected 31 Basque productions in different formats.

Last goodbye.

Directedby Koldo Almandoz.

Official Section (out of competition), competing for the Irizar Prize for Basque Cinema.

Actors: Iñigo Azpitarte, Izaro Nieto, Josean Bengoetxea and Iñaki Beraetxe.

When you're the owner of a secular funeral company, when your driver's license was taken from you for drunk driving, when you fall in love with a younger internship student, when your daughter starts to realize that you're not the father she thought you were, when you asked her for money when the retired boxer is after you, when death interests you more than life, what can go wrong?

Blind ants

Directedby Igor Legarreta.

Zinemira, competing for the Irizar Prize for Basque Cinema.

Performers: Urko Olazabal, Itziar Ituño, Josean Bengoetxea, Mira Gaztañaga, Carlos Santos, Unax Hayden, Patxi Bisquert, Daniel Cabrera, Kimetz Etxabe, Markel Coco, Anuk Puertolas and Elena Uriz.

At night, the inhabitants of Algorta gather on the coast to rescue the black gold. Sabas Jauregui sees it as a stroke of luck, Josefa, his wife, as a bad omen. Ignoring his pleas, Sabas takes his children to the storm. The family will make it unthinkable to protect the coal that could save them from winter or condemn them forever.

The Blood Moon

Series, EITB Gala.

Directedby David R. Losada.

Performers: Jon Muñoz, Aritz Kortabarria, Nekane Otxoa, Aitor Borobia, Iraia Elias, Nerea Sanz, Sambou Diaby, Itziar de Castro, Lier Alava, Iñigo Aranburu, Asier Valdesilla, Barbara Rivas and Miriam Cabeza.

10 years later, a high school alumni party will bring Julen and some of his former classmates back together. He will go unwillingly, and with Melyssa he will have only one friend, so long after. But of all his classmates, the only one who is not expected to find him is Ibai, who was a great friend of his childhood and who just left prison today.

Simulation

Directedby Nitya López Saitua.

Zinemira, competing for the Irizar Prize for Basque Cinema.

Performers: Iraia Elias, Miguel Garcés and Nitya Lopez Saitua.

A director returns to his childhood home to recreate with the actors the controversy that caused his parents to break up when he was four years old. Through improvisation and filming that reveals his own artifice, he builds unused memories. But as the scene repeats itself, the guidelines become destabilized and the boundary between renewal and desire begins to blur.

September

Address: Izaskun Arandia Galarraga.

Zinemira, competing for the Irizar Prize for Basque Cinema.

"In late 1935, Miguel Barga — my great-grandfather — left the family in Toulouse and returned to his hometown, Burgos. The family was informed of Miguel's death in the war. Miguel's body never returned. His great-grandfather's death was a family taboo for decades. However, in 2018 the DNA program of the Gogora Institute identified his remains and we knew a lot of data, although two important questions remained unanswered: why he went there and why he was killed."

Txakun Txakür

DirectorElsa Oliarj-Inés.

Zinemira, competing for the Irizar Prize for Basque Cinema

No one remembers his first game at school. That day he wasn't an adult. I was in the playground. I filmed the same group of kids for eight years, wondering how we grow up under the eyes of others. As the years went by, the games in the playground became role-playing.