Programme 1

Level
Carlos Mora Fuentes, Anna Berkhof, Spain, Netherlands, 2026, 79 min, digital, Dutch, Spanish, English subtitles and electronic Spanish subtitles. Spanish premiere.

An intimate meditation on the relationship between human beings and landscape, where layers of history and memory intertwine with the rhythms of nature. A diptych between the Netherlands and Cantabria, where the directors welcome their son and renovate their home in the mountains as cinema and life become interwoven and mutually transformed.

“To understand what has disappeared, you must name every element of the landscape that is missing.” There is in this film a fascination with the world at its origin. An invitation to see it as if it were the first time. And also to see it twice. Directed with four hands and two voices —Him, with text on screen in Spanish; Her, with her own voice in Dutch—, their creative process seems to run parallel to their relationship as a couple, and with parenthood — with its haphazard ups and downs amongst the lush plains of the Netherlands and the valleys of Cantabria.

With an attentive and patient gaze, like tilling the land, they trace gestures through which they question the memory of the landscape, its different layers of perception, and the memories we link to a mountain, to a tree. To give shape to this distance, Anna nostalgically returns to some analogue video clips from her childhood, recorded by her father. To put this distance to the test, Carlos records, from the intimate proximity of the camera, the miracle of life — Leo.

The interplay of metaphors and visual metonymies takes shape thanks to the use of the split screen, which emerges to link not only two times, but two opposing landscapes, two lives. Seeking harmony in disorder, surrendering to entropy.

Antonio Miguel Arenas