A window to Basque cinema in London

For the ninth year running, UK audiences will have to chance to see some of the latest productions of Basque cinema at the London Spanish Film Festival from 26-30 September.

For the ninth year running, UK audiences will have to chance to see some of the latest productions of Basque cinema at the ondon Spanish Film Festival from 26-30 September.

This year’s Basque Window, supported by the Etxepare Institute, will feature two fiction feature, one documentary and a short film. All four are UK debuts.

La higuera de los bastardos (2017), directed by Navarre-born Ana Murugarren, will open the Basque Window programme on 27 September, accompanied by the film’s producer Joaquín Trincado. In her second film as director, Murugarren tells a story of atonement in which a Spanish Civil War Falangist moved by fear and guilt progressively becomes a hermit. It is an adaptation of the novel La Higuera by Bilbao author Ramiro Pinilla.

Igor Legarreta´s debut film Cuando dejes de quererme (2018) will screen on the 29th. The film tells the story of Laura, who leaves the Basque Country, supposedly after being abandoned by her father when she was a girl, and lives in Buenos Aires with her stepfather. One day she receives a phone call informing her that her father, played by the recent winner of the Goya Award for Best New Actor, Eneko Sagadoy, has been found dead buried in a forest. According to forensic evidence, he was shot in the neck more than 30 years ago. Laura returns to the Basque Country with her stepfather and begins an investigation into the reasons behind her father´s death.

Basque cuisine will also have a place at the festival on 30th September. The documentary Soul (2016), directed by José Antonio Blanco and Ángel Parra, stars Basque chef Eneko Atxa and Japanese sushi master Jiro Ono. The film is a cinematographic journey to Japan, where Atxa meets the legendary 90-year-old Jiro Ono, and visits some of Tokyo’s most iconic gastronomic locations such as the Tsukiji fish market and Japan’s most exclusive restaurant Mibu. Soul explores the secrets of gastronomy, focusing on two cuisines so apparently opposite in philosophy, concept and experience, both of which have garnered the highest culinary recognition, three Michelin stars. The session will be preceded by Caminan, a short film by Mikel Rueda.

View the complete programme here.