918 GAU

Year2021 Duration66 min. Projection formatDCP ColourColour LanguageBasque DirectorArantza Santesteban PhotographyMaddi Barber EditorMariona Solé SoundAlazne Amestoy Production Txintxua Films, Hiruki Filmak, Marian Fernández Pascal, Marina Lameiro

Selected filmography: 918 GAU (2021), Lilularen Kontra (2021), Euritan (2017), Gorputz_Grafiak (2015), Passatgeres (2012).

Doclisboa, Torino Film Festival, L'Alternativa, Novos Cinemas. 

Arantza Santesteban is dictating into a voice recorder. She is recounting her recollections. The first: the day on which she was arrested for membership of an outlawed political party which supported Basque independence, at a time when open conversations were being held with ETA and some political parties with the intention of putting an end to the conflict. It was on 4th October 2007. 918 were the number of nights that she spent in prison. More than two and a half years. The recollections narrated by Santesteban are full of details: the pattern of a carpet, sweat, a desire to smile, to roar with laughter. The narrative is constructed in such a way that the spectator gets the feeling of experiencing the situation first-hand. The scenes of the filmmaker recording her voice and narrating fragments of her recollections are combined with different documents: the court order, photos, letters. The documents are scanned, as if they also had to go through a process in order to reach the present and serve to recollect. Santesteban's own voice accompanies these archival materials but we could say that it is a second voice. Different from the first one. The one on the recorder. This second voice establishes a necessary distance. Finally, the staged scenes: two women having sex, a girl dancing techno in a poorly lit discotheque, another girl walking through a wood, calling to the birds who land on her hands. Who are these women? Are they also part of Santesteban's recollection? Other lives that she may have had? Are all these personalities combined into one? The different film devices that come into play make up a fragmented film in which the director achieves something that has never done before: she addresses the issue of the Basque conflict from first-hand experience, transmitted from complexity and doubt. And, finally, the silence comes.

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Promoted by
Gobierno de Navarra
Organized by
NICDO
With the aid of
Con la financiación del Gobierno de España. Instituto de la Cinematografía y las Artes Audiovisuales Acción Cultural Española Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia Financiado por la Unión Europea. NexGenerationEU
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