Cinespaña Toulouse: Basque Cinema

The French city of Toulouse will be filled with Basque cinema the first two weeks of October. Dedicated to Spanish cinema, this year’s Cinespaña Festival will feature a retrospective of Basque cinema. As the result of an agreement signed with the Etxepare Basque Institute, the festival will include a section called Nouveau Cinéma Basque.

As the festival organizers explain, ‘This programme covers the different paths taken by Basque cinema in recent years, from the most popular to independent auteur productions. For a little over a decade now, in some places and events [in the Basque Country] a seed of independent cinema was planted and has turned out to be one of the most interesting and prolific in Spain.’

This section of 21st century ‘New Basque Cinema’ will include fiction, documentaries, feature films and shorts made in the Basque language and Spanish in the Basque Country. The programme will be divided into four sections: ‘Moriarti’, which includes the most significant films by made the Moriarti production company, (80 egunean, Loreak, Handia and La trinchera infinita); ‘Fictions’ will screen two fiction films that have triumphed in recent years (Amama and Negociador); ‘Documentaires’ will include the best documentaries made in recent years (Mudar la piel, Converso and La casa Emak Bakia); and ‘Court-Métrages – Cuerpos, gritos y escenas de vida’, a section dedicated to the new look brought to Basque cinema through short films made by women (Euritan, Gure Ormek, Andrekale, Lursaguak and Cuerpos #1 Santa Águeda). See the full programme here.

Another Basque film has been selected to compete in one of the sections that is not part of the Basque film retrospective. Zumiriki (2019) is a documentary by Navarra director Oskar Alegría which will compete for the festival’s Best Documentary.

25 years screening Spanish films

The Cinespaña Festival, held every year in Toulouse, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Originally founded in 1992 by AFICH (Association du Festival International du Cinéma Hispanique) under the name Les Écrans de l´Histoire, the association’s aim was to commemorate the Spanish Civil War. Soon, however, it became an annual exhibition of Spanish cinema.

The Spanish Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA) has collaborated with the festival since its earliest years of the event. Over the years, other institutions have also joined the project. Fernando Fernán Gómez, Carmen Maura and Marisa Paredes are some of the most prominent names in Spanish cinema to visit the festival. In 2019 the festival featured 119 films screened in 57 cinemas (11 in Toulouse and 46 in other towns in the region) to a total audience of 31,500 spectators.