Beside the Water

The neighbourhood of Housewives. The district of Insomniacs. The newsstand of the Unknown Mother. The underground of The Lonely Women. Our walls pay tribute to the people we love.

Twelve short films, twelve portraits of the city of San Sebastian.

A woman was almost called Avioneta (Small Airplane) at birth. Another had a library in the back seat of her car. Yet another fractures her finger with the rebel shelves of her bookshop. Lectors read to cigar makers while they work. Women remember poems while they iron. And to them all I sing.

—You really loved him? —Yes, I stopped loving him recently. (Interferences. Silences. Fissures. Two women talking. A radio-graphy).

In 1972, in one of his best-known articles, Pier Paolo Pasolini spoke of the disappearance of fireflies. A few months later he was murdered. Since then the fireflies have continued to disappear. But there are still people who remember them.

In 1967, in the midst of Franco's dictatorship, a group of seminarians thirsty for freedom founded the group Enarak. They played pop, rock and psychedelia, styles that were foreign to the society of the time, and all of it entirely in Basque. After hundreds of concerts, they mysteriously disappeared in 1971. Fifty years later, the singer's son, Beñat, sets out to find traces of the group, immersing himself in a film labyrinth that mixes ornithology, collage and eccentric research.

In the mountains you get lost; sometimes on purpose and other times unintentionally. The documentary Oinez deviate towards this tranquil mountaineering via three routes in the Basque Country. In each one it emerges a deep, authentic and funny conversation that reveals a small truth.

Through his own photographs, the Basque artist Néstor Basterretxea (1924-2014) is portrayed by the art critic and exhibition curator Peio Aguirre, a great connoisseur of his work and personal archives.

Paradise, a boat and a tourist with a phone.

After the death of his mother in 2011, the director embarks on an intimate journey through the personal objects and memories that remain of her in the present. This short documentary explores grief and illness and their relationship with dignity, care and transmission, claiming cinema as a tool to reveal the past.