Please tell us about the projects you worked on before making ‘Hezur Berriak’. How did you start, and how did you learn to make films?
I come from the world of musical creation and production at all levels. In Cinema, I began my professional career after studying higher education in production, direction and scriptwriting. But it has been my experience with sound that has guided me to tell this story in an audiovisual way. The truth is, I had never imagined myself directing a narrative fiction project.
Tell us about ‘Hezur Berriak’. How do you describe it?
Hezur Berriak was born from the need to shed light on the tragic events that the history of our small border country has hidden out of shame. And today, immigrants who try to cross into France are also exploited or murdered by local mafias. But in our collective imagination an unreal and romantic image has been forged of what the figure of the smuggler meant during the fascist military dictatorship that ruled in Spain. No one has ever told us that all smugglers were not heroic figures who put their lives on the line to feed their families. Reality tells us that many family members without needs dedicated themselves to exploiting the miseries of people in a state of misfortune and exile.
The truth about the actions of our relatives should not be a shame or an embarrassing secret. Putting the light of cinema on the darkness of our actions will help us heal as a society and treat otherness from more horizontal parameters.
Please tell us about your favorite filmmakers.
This is the most difficult question because since I was a child I have enjoyed the classics of Cinema to the experimental authors: Welles, Kurosawa, Bergman, Buñuel, Lang, Tarkovski, Coppola, etc...
And to cite some contemporary author today I can name Paolo Sorrentino, Ruben Östlund, Lars Von Trier, Lucrecia Martel, Lois Patiño...
And the last film that has especially caught my attention has undoubtedly been "Hand that Binds", by Kyle Armstrong and with the wonderful music of Jim O'Rourke.
If you were given a good budget, what would be your ideal project?
My ideal project would be a film where the budget for the image department is the same as that for the sound department.
A very small team, ideally without artificial lighting and subordinating the visual narrative
thread to the musicality created by the different human spaces.
I prefer quality over quantity.
Describe how you would ensure that production is on schedule. What steps would you take?
I think this question is linked to the previous one. Most budgets focus on the expenses incurred by film cameras, lighting, energy, personnel... Since filming Hezur Berriak, we have shifted towards a smaller material and personnel model. I wanted to return to my roots as a musical creator and gain autonomy and budget and I have tried to export the production models so far with success. We have shot three short films in one
year, but focusing on sound and musicality.
What was the hardest part of making ‘Hezur Berriak’.
Without a doubt the excess of people and resources. I needed to tell a story from a more classic fictional treatment and I knew that I had to accept certain excesses. But after experience, I am satisfied with having managed, without much prior experience, a
project of such magnitude. But I insist, I am proud of my work, but right now I am more interested in another type of lighter, more agile and experimental production.
If possible, tell us about your next work. What plans do you have for your future work?
I have just produced and acted as cinematographer on three short films. I have teamed up with the sound artist Xabier Erkizia and we are shooting a feature film together about the song of birds and the abduction of beauty. It's a slow-cooking project and we've been shooting it for two years.
At the same time, we are filming different sequences for another experimental feature film with actor Welket Bungué. And by 2025 we are reflecting on the desire for a film about the declining phenomenon of active listening.
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