Alberto Martín Menacho

In Córdoba, Spain, budding filmmakers and actors from the Federico García Lorca primary school are working on a film project. An idea takes shape… to bring to the screen the story of the Roma people from the Punjab, who have lived in Spain for several centuries and yet are still perceived as foreigners by the local community.

Three generations, the old way of life and its traces in the present. The memory, the reminiscence of a village in Extremadura. Of that Spain of years ago where my family had to migrate north, away from the land where they grew up, only to return later and observe.

In this small village in Extremadura, population has been declining since the 1960s, driven away by unemployment. Alberto Martín Menacho returns to this region he knows intimately, and together with local youths, spins stories in a reality suspended between tradition and modernity, human and animal, between a thousand-year-old oak tree and Tinder. A strikingly graceful debut film.

While the vultures squabble over food, life carries on as usual for a small community in the Spanish mountains. The elderly teach the young to hunt. Those still too young, (im)patiently await their turn. A girl sets out with her donkey. A farewell and a new beginning.