Short films from new galician audiovisual talent and the most experimental european cinema come together at FICBUEU

26.08.24. BUEU. This September, FICBUEU will become a meeting point and showcase platform for emerging local audiovisual talent and the latest short films produced in Galicia. This will be achieved through “GZ_00,” a section that the Festival Internacional de Cine de Bueu introduced last year, aimed at bringing the work of new short filmmakers, directed and/or produced in the region, closer to the public. The event will take place on Sunday the 8th, starting at 6:30 PM, at the Auditorio del Centro Social do Mar in Bueu. During the “GZ_00” screenings, the audience will have the opportunity to see four films from this new generation of Galician filmmakers, who will compete for the Best Galician Short Film Award. The selected works cover a variety of themes but all belong to the documentary genre.

Behind the titles are three female directors and one male director. Andrea Bouzo (Cambados, 1993) presents Kalabukú. La semilla del cambio, which tells the story of four women from Oukout, Senegal (kalabukú means “women” in Diola, the local language), who gather every Sunday with their group to self-manage a microcredit system and organize the rice harvest, seeking a balance between traditional life and economic independence. With a strong social focus and a commitment to gender issues, Bouzo combines her work as a fiction, advertising, and documentary filmmaker with her role as an editor. Her most recent work is editing the series Marbella, directed by Dani de la Torre for Movistar Plus+.

Quemar cuando muera is the work of Inés Pintor, a director and screenwriter born in Madrid in 1989, though of Coruñese origin. The short film is a personal reflection on family, memories, and the lives of women born in the 1930s, inspired by the death of her grandmother Encarna and the discovery of a package in a wardrobe containing objects, photos, and Super 8 footage with a note that read: “Burn at my death, Lord’s Prayer and into the fire.” Pintor has worked on series like El Ministerio del Tiempo and films like Blancanieves by Pablo Berger, Combustión by Daniel Calparsoro, and Musarañas, produced by Álex de la Iglesia. Since 2016, she has run her own production company, La Breve Historia, and in 2021, she co-created the Netflix series El tiempo que te doy with Pablo Santidrián.

Stories of Emigration

The Coruñese filmmaker Anita Pico (A Coruña, 1996) will present Segunda II at “GZ_00”, a portrait that uncovers the life of Segunda García, a 79-year-old woman born in a small village in Coristanco who defies her own name by starring in an exceptional story of triumph through emigration. Pico, the great-niece of the film’s protagonist, has directed four short films and founded the production company Henfunk Studio. She has worked as a screenwriter for TVE, the BBC, and HBOMax Spain, has written and directed her first digital series, the sitcom Pulp Air, and is currently working on her first feature film, Shido.

Hugo Amoedo (Redondela, 1987) completes the lineup of emerging Galician cinematic talent showcased at FICBUEU this year. He will present pechar caixas abrir caixas, an autobiographical documentary shot on Super 8 about the concept of return, intertwining two stories: the move of writer Xavier Queipo, who returns to Galicia after 30 years living in Brussels, and the director’s own story, as he grapples with uncertainty about when and how he will return to his homeland. In the meantime, he teaches his son to ride a bike, has dreams and ideas for films, and argues at the post office. Amoedo, who often blends intimate and political elements, drama, and comedy in his short films, also works for RTBF, Belgium’s French-speaking public broadcaster, as an audiovisual producer and trainer for European institutions.

Spanish Premieres

The “Descubertas” section will also be screened on Sunday, September 8, starting at 9:00 PM. This section includes six of the most avant-garde and innovative short films on the global cinema scene. This year, all the selected films are European, and two of them have chosen FICBUEU for their Spanish premieres: Scenic View by Finnish visual artist and filmmaker Maija Blåfield, an experimental film about nature that explores how we view a forest landscape, but also how we perceive reality; and Intelligence by the French directors Cosme Castro and Jeanne Frenkel, a fantasy short about a man who works at a newspaper and one day discovers his own obituary in it, stating that he will die at 45.

A Strong Presence of Animation

The other four films will be screened in Galicia for the first time as part of the festival. One of them is Beautiful Men, an animated film from the Netherlands by Nicolas Keppens about three bald brothers who travel to Istanbul for hair transplants. Trapped in a hotel far from home, they find that their insecurities grow faster than their hair. This film won an award at the Annecy Festival.

The Waiting by German director Volker Schlecht is another award-winning animated short, this time about biologist Karen Lips, who describes her research into various species of frogs from Central American rainforests and their mysterious disappearance as if it were a criminal case. 

Swiss directors Bianca Caderas and Kerstin Zemp created Matta und Matto, an animated short that imagines a world where physical contact is forbidden, and only a sort of roaming hotel satisfies the need for touch, albeit in unconventional ways. This film has been screened at festivals like Clermont-Ferrand, Melbourne, Sundance, SXSW, and Buenos Aires, and won at IndieLisboa and the Ann Arbor Film Festival in Michigan (USA), one of the world’s most important independent and experimental film festivals. 

From Italy, La Línea del Terminatore by Gabriele Biasi, a documentary nominated at Venice, tells the story of Fernanda González’s escape from Buenos Aires to Italy, interweaving archival footage of space exploration with family videos to portray the protagonist’s emotional journey and the guilt she feels for leaving her loved ones behind.