Basque Film Series

As a complement to FICViña, Viña del Mar International Film Festival, the City Council and Etxepare Euskal Institutua organize the Basque Film Series, now in its fifth edition.

‘Bizkarsoro’ (Josu Martinez, 2023)
Abenduak 3
16:00 | Palacio Rioja, Sala Aldo Francia

In a non-existent town, five true stories based on oral testimonials and texts by writers take place between 1914 and 1982. Through them, we see the social changes experienced throughout the 20th century by a small town in the Northern Basque Country, the deep-rootedness and approximation of a language, and the struggle for survival.

‘Cinco lobitos’ (Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, 2022)
Abenduak 10
16:00 | Palacio Rioja, Sala Aldo Francia

Amaia has recently become a mother. Her partner is away for months at a time and she is overwhelmed, unable to take care of her baby and return to her work as a translator. She decides to hole up at her parents house in the hope that they will take care of both herself and her baby in the place where she grew up, a pretty coastal town in the Basque Country. But life has other plans; her mother falls ill and it is Amaia who has to look after them all. She finds herself obliged to live her mother´s life of thirty years ago. She becomes a housewife, with an absent partner, in charge of a baby and an ailing grandmother. The family roles are reversed, forever changing their relations. The daughter becomes everyone´s mother. Amaia, who had only loved her mother until now, will also start to understand her.

‘El Vasco’ (Jabi Elortegi 2022)
Abenduak 17
16:00 | Palacio Rioja, Sala Aldo Francia

Mikel has decided to change his life and accepts a distant relative´s invitation to travel to Argentina and settle there. However, it´s not long before he realises that his uncle Chelo is nothing more than an affable gambler and drinker who has nothing to offer him. As if that wasn´t bad enough, things become even more complicated when Chelo´s mother Amuma Dolores awakens from a lethargy of ten years on hearing Mikel sing a lullaby in Basque and mistaking him for her brother Juanito, Mikel´s grandfather. From then on, the whole village sets about making Dolores believe that she is still in her native Bermeo of the 50s. Mikel will have nothing better to do than act as peacemaker between Dolores´ squabbling children, Chelo and Begoña, with the help and complicity of Inés, the eternally cheerful carer of Amuma Dolores.