Before Paradise

Plague: From the Latin word “plaga” meaning 'blow', 'wound'. Meaning: Massive, sudden appearance of living beings of the same species that cause serious damage to animal or plant populations. Abundance of something harmful.

Inspector Nerea Garcia is sent to a small fishing village to investigate the disappearance of a skipper. She will soon realize that it is not a routine case and that nothing is what it seems. The past is always unpredictable.

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.

A lonely fisherman knows what hook to use for each fish. Now he’s looking for a hook for the impossible catch...

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

Khalil is a young man torn from his roots who lives on the edge of town, where the industrial estates merge into the river and the marshes. Khalil gets by as best he can and spends his time with an old poacher, who shares a house on the riverbank with a brother he hasn't spoken to in years. On the banks of the marshes, the tides mark the time of love and heartbreak, of friendship and revenge.

A sinister tale of ships and shipwrecks, love and cinema, ghosts and vampires. Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, his wife Florence Balcombe and her relationship with Oscar Wilde. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and the lurking shadow of Count Orlok, the undead, the nosferatu. A mysterious cruise ship, a profaned tomb, an exciting adventure.

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.

Nerea Garcia is having a rough time of it; it’s four years since she was thrown out of the Basque Ertzaintza police force and she now leads a solitary life in her Bilbao home. The appearance of a woman’s corpse, murdered in some kind of ritual, prompts her former boss to ask her for help with the investigation. What Nerea hadn’t realised is that ghosts from the past and present would lead her down into the bowels of the city, where nothing and nobody is what it seems.

The horrors of a shipwreck, the bells of aforgotten lighthouse and the coming and going of the tides surround a tale about the sea. 'Sailor’s Grave' is the result of a workshop based on a work method taking its inspiration from the exquisite corpse game, a mechanism of collective creation where the participants manipulate and transform one another's drawings to construct an intuitive, improvised narration.

—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.

It's always the end of an era.

The story of a pioneer of the engine who dreamt of dragonflies as a child and died living out his dream.

'Euskal Harriaren ABDak' is a collective film made up by 26 horror, science fiction and fantasy short films. The shorts are directed by Basque filmmakers and amateur groups.