Soinujolearen semea

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 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.

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.

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.

Irene, a former member of the terrorist gang ETA recently released from prison in Catalonia, recalls her past during her return trip to the Basque Country.

In the mountains of the Basque Country, a mother and her daughter take shelter in a ruined hut that seems uninhabited.

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.

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.

Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.