Spain’s Basque Country is perfectly suited to genre filmmaking

The Basque Audio­visual office is busy at Cannes spotlighting four productions made in the Basque Country, the autonomous community situated in northwest Spain, where San Sebastian is located.

In the festival, Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe’s short film Contadores has been selected for Critics’ Week, while in the market two more shorts, Laura Ibáñez López’s Corpúsculos and Pablo Río’s Conej Steps Out, are being showcased in Short Film Corner. Larraitz Zuazo’s feature documentary Itoiz Summer Sessions is screening in Cannes Docs, and Carlota Pereda’s The Chapel is part of the Cannes market’s Fantastic 7 genre showcase of international projects.

This new generation of Basque filmmakers is catching the eye of international festivals and audiences. Earlier this year, Estíbaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species Of Bees screened in Competition at the Berlinale, winning the best acting award for child actress Sofía Otero, while Paul Urkijo’s medieval fantasy Irati is riding high at the Spanish box office since being released by Filmax in February (it is the most successful Basque-language film of all time in the Basque Country).

Title credits 

Contadores is set in 1978 and tells the story of industrial relations among workers at a factory near San Sebastian. The short was inspired by the themes of a feature being developed by Gorostidi Agirretxe called Anekumen.

The project was selected for the Basque residency programme Ikusmira Berriak in 2022 and Gorostidi Agirretxe aims to shoot the feature in 2024. The films explore Spain’s transition period to democracy following the death of General Franco. “The workers had big dreams,” she says of the mood she aims to capture.

In the market, Corpúsculos and Conej Steps Out are screening as part of ICAA and ICEX’s graduate short programme 2cool4schoolvol.3. Ibáñez López studied at the Basque Country’s Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola and Río is a student of DigiPen Institute of Technology Bilbao.

Additionally Basque production company uniko has a short film called to bird or not to bird in the Revelations showcase of new Spanish animation.

Feature documentary Itoiz Summer Sessions, about the rise of 1970s Basque rock band Itoiz, is screening as part of Cannes Docs, while Filmax is on board Pereda’s The Chapel, as both producer and sales agent. The film is now in post.

The Chapel is Pereda’s second feature following her Sundance 2022 debut Piggy. It stars Belén Rueda in the story of a young girl who is trying to communicate with her dead mother through a fake medium. It was shot in the Basque Country in autumn 2022 and Pereda believes the evocative setting is perfectly suited to genre filmmaking.

“The stunning landscapes, mythology and sense of tradition combined with modernity of the Basque Country is truly inspiring,” she says.

In Cannes, Basque Audiovisual is helping to facilitate greater international engagement with the Basque Country as both a filmmaking partner and as a location. The organisation is run by Zineuskadi, the regional government’s film body and is supported by the Etxepare Basque Institute and the EIKEN Cluster. It is part of ‘Basque’, a brand project that aims to increase the awareness and visibility of the Basque creative, cultural and artistic scene.

Fostering talent is a major part of its work, supporting initiatives such as the annual Noka Mentoring programme for rising women directors and a Talent Day to introduce film students and aspiring filmmakers to production companies.

It hosted a panel in Cannes called ‘Basque Country: the land of the fantastic’ at the Fantastic Pavilion yesterday (May 18). Filmmakers Pereda and Urkijo were joined by Josemi Beltran, director of the Horror and Fantasy Film Festival of San Sebastián, Mònica Garcia, general manager at SITGES — International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, and producer Iñaki Gómez from Bixagu Entertainment.

“There was a generation of Basque filmmakers that migrated to Madrid to work,” says Beltran. “Now they know they can do it here, and in Basque.”