For a new generation of Basque filmmakers coming into focus at San Sebastián, stories often begin with something unresolved: an argument a child cannot remember, the working lives buried in an industrial landscape, a language whose influence reaches beyond the words spoken on screen. His “Akira” is taking shape between the Basque Country and Georgia. Joana Moya’s upbringing on Bilbao’s industrial Left Bank informs her interest in “who we are beyond work and how the land and its materiality shape us.” For Gemma González Martínez, Basque identity provides a point of departure rather than a limit.
It is my starting point.” Across their work, identity, memory and place are testing grounds. Mikele Landa sees another possibility in that process: “I am tremendously interested in the use of memory as a matter to imagine possible futures, as a tool of resistance.” Their routes to a first feature are varied, spanning journalism, cultural production, television, camera crews and years working on other directors’ films. San Sebastián has been part of that trajectory for several: Landa entered Ikusmira Berriak in 2024, Moya followed in 2025 and Albite joins the program this year.
With new works from Nitya López and Gemma González Martínez in Zinemira, and Javier Giner entering with buzz in New Directors, the festival offers a meeting point for eight filmmakers with breakout potential. After assistant directing-team jobs on “Ane,” “The Good Boss” and “Maixabel,” López makes his feature debut with a problem no amount of production experience can resolve: how to film a memory he doesn’t have. In Zinemira entry “Family Drill” (“Simulacro”), Iraia Elias and Miguel Garcés help him stage the parental confrontation behind a separation that happened when he was four.
Rehearsing possible versions of the event raises questions about what he wants from the reconstruction. The Ibarrangelu-born filmmaker’s earlier directing credits include short “Deadly Draw” and “Aloka(h)iru,” an EITB series co-created with Alba Lozano. Moya’s geology training gives her an unusual qualification for “La Koreana,” a debut feature project in which the mountain has a history of its own.
The arrival of Manuela, who comes from Andalusia to a mining settlement in 1960, opens a story that eventually breaks through into 1890. Lazona Zinema and Sirimiri Films, headed by “20,000 Species of Bees” director Estibaliz Urresola, are producing; last year’s Sideral Award at Ikusmira Berriak brought a €10,000 ($11,600) international distribution minimum guarantee. For the director, whose short “Salt Covers All” reached Hot Docs, the workers’ struggle concerns a still-familiar “search for dignity, time and freedom.” Could the grammar of Euskera affect where a filmmaker makes a cut?
That is the kind of question occupying Landa as she develops “Senda” with Gariza Films. Her plans include using translation to inform the film’s construction, and casting sessions to continue its research and writing. An EQZE alum with Basque public bradcaster EITB and Berria journalism experience, Landa has taken the project through Noka Mentoring and Ikusmira Berriak.
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