2023-11-09 16:24:48
Only two of the seven directors of the Basque short films in competition at Zinebi have presented themselves to defend them in the Bilbao competition, which begins its 65th edition this Friday. Honorary Mikeldi Frederick Wiseman, 93 years old, will also not come “due to a sudden worsening of his health.” The absence of local filmmakers is striking because some of these films are being screened for the first time before the public. This is the case of ‘Betiko gaua’ (The eternal night), the leap to direction by actor Eneko Sagardoy, who has trusted Miren Gaztañaga and Elena Irureta for an intriguing and suggestive night story filmed in Basque.
A woman chases another in a car until she catches up with her at a gas station. It’s her mother, who has left home without giving any explanation. “You have a good life,” her daughter tells her. “That’s why I’m leaving,” responds the escapee. An unexpected final twist that turns the story around rounds out this small family drama that, despite its simplicity, has production packaging and has music by Aranzazu Calleja and Maite Arroitajauregi. The winner of the Goya for ‘Handia’ has not been able to come to Bilbao (he has just spent eight months filming ‘Those About to Die’ with Anthony Hopkins, a series about Roman gladiators directed by Roland Emmerich), but he has sent a video of gratitude.
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David Pérez Sañudo did approach Zinebi to justify returning to the short film after his successful debut in the feature film with ‘Ane’, which won three Goyas at the Goya Awards a couple of years ago. “You wouldn’t ask that question to Sergi Pàmies or Quim Monzó (authors of short stories),” argues the director from Bilbao based in Vitoria, who approaches the short format “with the utmost caution and enthusiasm, as if it were my first job.” . ‘Agrio’ takes its name from a meringue made in a Burgos pastry shop run by two sisters and which has taken a child to the hospital.
Poster for ‘Agrio’, by David Pérez Sañudo.
“It is a simple story that explores a moral dilemma, between the sentimental and the legal,” summarizes Pérez Sañudo, who has had the good fortune to turn two of the busiest Basque actresses into sisters, who also give themselves an air: Itziar Ituño and Patricia López Arnaiz. ‘Agrio’ also concludes with a meringue binge scene that provokes the same anxiety as Paul Newman’s bet in ‘The Legend of the Indomitable’, boasting that he was capable of eating 50 boiled eggs.
The third most drinkable short of the selection offers beautiful landscapes of Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Ciboure. ‘Ximinoa’ (The Monkey) is directed by Labour-born director Itziar Leemans and follows a girl during a summer who works as a nanny for a rich family, one of those who leave Paris when the heat arrives to enjoy the French Basque Country in inherited mansions. Fed up with her mother, the protagonist entertains the idea of leaving a provincial environment and living in the big capital. The most interesting thing about the short, spoken in French and Basque, is the subtle analysis of a social class conflict.
‘The monkey’, by Itziar Leemans.
The four remaining shorts can be assigned to the genre of video art and experimentation, which Zinebi usually chooses every year. However, they can also win the festival’s Grand Prize (7,000 euros), the Basque Cinema Grand Prize (6,000 euros), the Spanish Cinema Grand Prize (6,000 euros), the Mikeldi in the fiction and animation categories (5,000 euros ) and the Audience Award (3,000 euros).
‘The Illustrated Woman’ can be seen as a complement to ‘The Sultana’s Dream’, the animated feature film with which Isabel Herguera competed at the last San Sebastián Festival. Eight minutes of handmade collages that narrate the desires and chimeras of four women in India, whom the San Sebastian director met in a Mehndi workshop, the temporary tattoo ritual with henna that prepares brides. Among her dreams, a parliament of women to fix men’s problems.
‘Memories of an Empty House’ brims with grain in its 8 millimeter image and digital video, the work of Portuguese filmmaker Bruno Carnide. A woman who abandoned her family reads the letters she sent to her husband. “I’m talking about how memories relate to people differently,” the author justified in a video. For her part, Laida Lertxundi conceives ‘In a Nearby Field’ as a ‘home movie’ in which she shows her daily life with the writer Ren Ebel and her 4-year-old daughter. At times, it seems like a Full Pantomime sketch about a couple of artists.
Trailer for ‘In a Nearby Field’, by Laida Lertxundi.
Finally, ‘Everything is covered by salt’ is the first work by Joana Moya from Bilbao and is born from an image that remained ingrained in her childhood: the nets in the port of Santoña. The hardness of the work of the sea is the backbone of this piece “with an observational part and a dreamlike part” flooded with pretentiousness.
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