In 2011, the prolonged armed conflict in the Basque Country appears to come to an end. A young woman runs away wanting to cross the border. She arrives in Zubieta, a border village where ancient myths and modern conflicts seem to converge.
Vitoria, Basque Country, Spain, March 3rd, 1976. After several months of protests demanding decent working conditions, representatives of struggling workers call for a general strike. In the church of San Francisco, in the working class neighborhood of Zaramaga, thousands of workers fill the temple in assembly. Outside, many more people gather and, in the middle, about a hundred heavily armed police officers wait to act.
A film set in the Basque region, beginning in the Carlist war of 1875 and ending during the Spanish Civil war of 1936. The film portrays how one single act of cowardice shapes the life of the next three generations of two families and fuels the intense rivalry which will span the next sixty-one years.
The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?
A trigger-happy Nationalist fears retribution from the son of a man he executed. To mollify the boy's anger, he takes a drastic step: he keeps constant watch over the fig tree the boy has planted at his father's gravesite. As the years pass, the man's lonely vigil makes him a tourist attraction, much to the chagrin of his former colleagues.
The Basque Country, 2009. Lide is a security guard for the high-speed train works, a project that generates social protests in the streets. Coming home after work and partying all night, she makes breakfast for two, but her teenage daughter, Ane, is nowhere to be found. The next day, she’s still not back.
Human bones are found at the Garizmendi farmhouse. Farmers Fermin and Karmen call their son Nestor, who reports the matter to the authorities. But, when the agents turn up, the bones are gone. Suddenly, the bell on the nearby chapel begins to peal. This bad omen announces the coming of tragic events and reopens old wounds within the family and those around it.
19-year-old Floreal is suddenly forced to face a past he tried very hard to overcome. A past that involves his eccentric grandmother Amanqay and a power stone she left behind.
David Imaz had to flee from the Basque Country in the mid-seventies, repudiated by his people, accused of betrayal. Despite having found happiness in California, his past still weighs him down and the feeling of guilt prevents him from being able to settle down and peacefully enjoy the last days of his life. Joseba Altuna, his childhood friend, comes to say goodbye and to settle the score while he's at it. It's been a long time since they saw one another, but the time has come to face the truth.
Nora is 30 years old; she lives with her Argentinian grandfather Nicolás and regularly takes care of her friend Meri's children. She writes the horoscope for the town newspaper, although her dream is to be a travel writer. When her grandfather dies, she inherits an old Dyane 6. Despite being a terrible driver, Nora will set out aimlessly on a road trip along the Basque coast so that her grandfather's ashes may finally rest beside those of her grandmother. The road will soon teach her that she's not a born traveller and that her dream had nothing to do with roving, but was only an excuse for the chance to be free, to grow, to close wounds and, for the first time, to find her own happiness.
Having fought in the First Carlist War, Martin returns to his family farm in Gipuzkoa only to find that his younger brother, Joaquín, towers over him in height. Convinced that everyone will want to pay to see the tallest man on Earth, the siblings set out on a long trip all over Europe, during which ambition, money and fame will forever change the family’s fate. A story based on true events.
Itziar is eight years old and lives in two very different worlds. On the one hand, the world of her disappointed Basque nationalist parents and, on the other, the religious school, which gives the girl a repressive and retrograde education. However, there is another kind of world, much nicer to Itziar, formed by the street and her friends.
One day, Pedro Sansinenea left family, friends and country, an environment that drowned him. Twenty years later he returns to the Basque Country for several reasons, where he finds old hatreds, new conflicts and even a dramatic love story.
A young woman who has just started a job at an art museum writes an email to a friend she lived with until recently. The other woman, also young, works as an artist and has just moved to a new city. A narrator reads this email, but we don't know which of the two women the voice belongs to, whether to the sender or to the receiver of the message. Neither are we aware of the details of this relationship; but what we do know is that, in addition to their interest in art, they share a concern for the difficulties of carrying out their personal and professional lives in the present. By focusing on the peripheral or hidden details of some paintings in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, this narrator relates several stories linked to the social, economic and psychological conditions of the artists, both past and present.
It's 8 AM in a summer morning from the 70's. Jon, an ETA member, is being chased by the police in the Old Town of San Sebastian. While he runs, he revises his whole life.
In the year 2000, Maixabel Lasa’s husband, Juan Maria Jauregi, was killed by ETA. Eleven years later, she receives an incredible request: one of the men who killed Juan wants to meet with her in the Nanclares de la Oca prison in Araba (Spain), where he is serving his sentence after breaking ties with the terrorist group. Despite her reservations and her immense pain, Maixabel Lasa agrees to meet face to face with those who ended the life of the person who had been her companion since she was 16 years old. ‘Everyone deserves a second chance’, she said, when asked why she was willing to confront the man who killed her husband.
In the mid-1980s, the GAL, a Spanish paramilitary group, pursues and assassinates members of the terrorist gang ETA who have taken refuge in the sanctuary they have created in the south of France. Grégoire Fortin, advisor to the French Minister of Justice, and Domingo 'Txomin' Iturbe, leader of ETA, are forced to negotiate in order to find a solution to the violence that plagues the region.
Spain. The Basque Country. Sometime in the 90s. Josu Jon, a young member of a terrorist organization, has suffered an almost complete memory loss after being wounded in a shooting with the Spanish police. As he awaits for his trial, his condition is being treated at the prison hospital. Other inmates belonging to the same organization try to make him remember how brave a "gudari" -a Basque soldier- he is and how he must go back to the armed fight for the independence of their country as soon as he gets out of prison. Meanwhile, Xabier, a college professor who has been death-threatened by the terrorists due to his political views on the Basque situation, is having an affair with Francesca, a young psychologist who happens to end up trying to help Josu Jon recover his memory. A warm feeling of mutual affection grows between her and her patient. At a point, it doesn't seem to be clear whether Josu Jon really wants to recover his memory or rather forget forever who he actually is.
Basque Country, Spain, 1843. A police constable arrives at a small village in Álava to investigate a mysterious blacksmith who lives alone deep in the woods.
In the mountains of the Basque Country, a mother and her daughter take shelter in a ruined hut that seems uninhabited.