Berlin Baskisches Filmest 2024

Organised by the Basque Centre of Berlin, and with the support of the Etxepare Basque Institute, the 6th Berlin Basque Film Festival will take place from November 15 to 17.

These are the screenings:

Bidasoa 2018-2023 (Fermin Muguruza, 2023)
November 15 | 20:00
Kino Moviemento

Police control and the closure of certain crossings on the Bidasoa river, natural border of the Pyrenées-Atlantiques Department, imposed by France in summer 2018 to prevent the entrance of immigrants on their way to other European countries, caused 10 deaths in a single year. Seven people died from April 2021, drowned in the waters of the River Bidasoa between Irun and Hendaia, while another three lost their lives in October 2021, hit by a train in Ziburu. This documentary, as well as putting a voice and face to several of the activists who work on either side of the river, as representatives of the Harrera Sarea (Reception Network) and Bidasoa Etorkinekin (The Bidasoa with Migrants) associations, also recalls those who lost their lives, giving them a name and an age, following their journey and their dreams, discovering the history and the people behind the cold figures of the deceased, giving the tragedy a more human aspect.

Bolante baten historia [Story of a steering wheel] (Iñaki Alforja, Iban Toledo, 2021)
November 16 | 20:00
Kino Moviemento

A forced disappearance doesn´t only end with the life of the person who has disappeared, but generates, like the ripples of a stone thrown into water, an enormous emotional scar in their families and in society. In the early 80s, José Miguel Etxeberria Álvarez, alias ´Naparra´, a member of the Autonomous Anti-capitalist Commandos, was disappeared. Between crossed statements, numerous vindications and judicial indifference, his family will try to find an answer for his disappearance. More than forty years later, Eneko has taken up the baton of the search for his brother to close the wound that has remained open for so many years.

Zinzindurrunkarratz (Oskar Alegria, 2023)
November 17 | 20:00
Kino Moviemento

A forgotten road, an old camera and a donkey named Paolo. These are the three elements in “Zinzindurrunkarratz”, a poetic journey through a memory of another time from which only fragments remain. Oskar Alegria, super-8 camera in tow, returns to the paths where his grandparents walked in the mountains of Artazu in Navarra to record the echoes of a world that no longer exists. Using silent images and blind sounds, the film, in the form of a journal whose title makes reference to the onomatopoeic pronunciation in the Basque language of a light breeze (zinzin), a falling stone (durrundurrun) and a summit struck by lightning (kurruzkarratz), builds bridges with the filmography of Jonas Mekas and reveals a unique personality capable of reminding the viewer that there is still much to discover in cinema.