JOARE TTE

In a valley where cowbells ring out loudly in winter, Aiara dreams of becoming a joaldun. As Carnival approaches and the other children get ready, she is told at home that, before she can carry the cowbells, there are many things she must understand.

HARAKUNE

Ari, an undocumented Mexican immigrant working as a dishwasher in Bilbao, flees the city after defending herself against a sexual assault by the man renting her a room. With nowhere to go, she arrives in a small village in Bizkaia seeking help, but ends up lost in the mountains. After a fall in the forest, she is rescued by Abel, a 75-year-old shepherd who lives alone in a dilapidated farmhouse. Despite his age and worsening hearing loss, Abel remains committed to a life shaped by hard work and survival. Ari offers to rent a room from him, and gradually their initial distrust gives way to an unexpected coexistence. In their isolated world, far from society, two lonely and vulnerable people begin to find companionship and shelter in one another. The appearance of a horse disrupts the fragile balance they have built. While Abel sees the animal as a source of income, Ari forms an emotional bond with it. The arrival of the police forces them to act together, strengthening a relationship born out of necessity but transformed by mutual care and affection. When Abel disappears into the forest after trying to set the horse free, Ari sets out to find him in the darkness. In doing so, she realizes that what began as a hiding place has become something far more meaningful: a place of belonging, protection, and shared humanity.

A EUROPEAN WOMAN

It is the year 2001. Olaia works as a film conservator at the Basque Film Archive. With her partner in prison for his political militancy and a mother struggling with alcoholism, she has learned to relate to the world through distance and control. In early December, she travels to Buenos Aires to authenticate a set of films discovered in the archive of photographer Luis D’Amico. They may contain the earliest known footage featuring the Basque language, shot in Argentina in 1921 by the Zubiaurre brothers. But when she arrives, the country is on the verge of the economic and social collapse that will culminate in the events of December 19 and 20, 2001. While waiting for access to the archive, Olaia spends her days alone in the apartment where she is staying. There, she discovers a series of desperate answering-machine messages left by a woman searching for a man named Rafael. Fascinated by the story, she decides to find him. What begins as curiosity gradually turns into an obsession: Olaia starts a relationship with Rafael while hiding both the existence of the messages and the real reason she sought him out. As the crisis takes over the streets and reality becomes impossible to ignore, Olaia retreats into this love story and her work with the films. But when the woman behind the messages finally appears, the fiction she has built begins to collapse. Forced to face the consequences of her actions, Olaia understand the extent to which she has used love as a form of escape.

The Depth of the Skin

Peru, a writer living in Bilbao, receives a desperate phone call from Diana, a Basque painter based in Kyoto. That very afternoon, he flies to Japan. Their reunion rekindles the intimacy of a bond that was never entirely extinguished. Over the course of several days, Diana tells him about the intense and turbulent love affair she had with the Japanese master who introduced her to the art of ukiyo-e. Through her story, Peru discovers a woman he thought he knew, as well as a hidden past she had never revealed. Yet the true reason for Diana’s call remains unspoken. Only when her story reaches its end will Peru understand why she has brought him halfway across the world—and what she is really asking of him.

The Daughters

A twenty-year-old girl is kidnapped one night by a stranger. The next morning, she wakes up in a house in the middle of the woods where three other young women are being held captive. There, she discovers that they behave as if they were the kidnapper’s daughters and that, whether she likes it or not, her fate will be to become one of them.

THOSE THE TRAIN BROUGHT

Anita is 10 years old, originally from Andalusia, and, along with her mother Antonia, arrives as a migrant in a small town in the Basque Country in the 1950s. In this setting of ancient forests and deep-rooted traditions, Anita doesn’t feel welcome, and everything around her frightens her—even more so when she’s forced to work with Santa, a grumpy old woman who lives in a farmhouse and speaks almost exclusively Basque. Anita wants to fit in and become one of the community. Paradoxically, it is through Santa and her Basque lessons that she begins to succeed, but the girl encounters an unexpected obstacle: her own mother, who is unwilling to let her lose her Andalusian roots or adopt a new culture.

BLOOD MOON

Ten years ago, Julen and Ibai were inseparable. Today, Julen is an ordinary young man, while Ibai has become a complete stranger to him. But everything changes with a death and a red moon that gives Julen a second chance...

A HUNDRED BIRDS IN THE SKY

Over the course of twelve months, while the Earth makes a turn around the sun, Jone, an Art student, will head to Chillida Leku in search of a sculptor who was born a hundred years ago. There, step by step, the artwork of Eduardo Chillida, his writings and ideas, and the conversations with those who surrounded him will gradually build in the air the image of an uncapturable man. Like that horizon that Chillida so often contemplated; the closer you get, the more it slips away.

THE CHAPEL

Emma wants to learn to communicate with the spirit of a girl who has been trapped in a chapel for centuries and for this reason she tries to convince Carol, an incredulous and false medium, to help her. Contacting her spirit will help her stay close to her sick mother when she dies. What Carol doesn't suspect is that Emma really does have 'the gift' and that if the girl continues to try to use it without her help, she will put her little young life in danger.

Lighting up the shadows

In 2025, the Basque Government, EITB, and the Basque Film Archive undertook the recovery and restoration of four medium-length films made entirely in Basque in the mid-1980s. The long and delicate process included a trip to the L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratories in Bologna. The documentary, an original EITB production, chronicles the journey of the four directors and the recovery process carried out in Italy. Because it is important to tell these stories too.