What was the inspiration behind ‘Replika’?

‘Replika' is born from two parallel stories that directly challenge me. On the one hand, after my father's death, I discovered an old short film directed by him in 1978 that contains a one-minute black hole inside. And on the other hand, the theft of the image of the Virgin of Zikuñaga in 1979, which left a hole in the hermitage of this neighbourhood of Hernani and which remains unresolved. We built a film around these two mysteries.

What central story or message did you want to convey with this project?

At heart, the film is a reflection on images and how they help us to remember. Images help us to remember our loved ones, but they also allow us to maintain a collective identity and cohesion with our neighbours. But what happens when those images disappear? How do we draw on these memories that need images to survive?

Were there any particular challenges during the filming that stuck with you?

The filming process of ‘Replika’ has been quite long. After a very extensive period of documentation and script writing, we have been shooting in intermittent spaces for almost a year. The idiosyncrasies of the film required that the shooting of the film overlap with the editing. This documentary is a film essay, which has evolved as we shot and edited it. The script has always been open to last-minute additions and to discoveries we made during the shooting. Therefore, the biggest challenge whilst producing this film has been to remain flexible in order to accept the script and editing changes that arose throughout the process.

What does it mean to you and your team that the documentary has been selected for the Zinemira section of the San Sebastian Festival?

It was an aspiration of ours to premiere at the Zinemaldia and it is clear that this means that the selection committee has valued the film very highly. Apart from the personal excitement of premiering at home, it is also very good strategic news for the film.

We are very grateful to Zinemaldia for the treatment it has always given us with all our films. It has always been a platform on which we have disseminated our projects and they have supported us at all times. It is a luxury to have the affection of the Zinemaldia team.

What would you most like the public to take away after seeing your work?

This is a very personal project. You could say that this film is a small act of undressing in front of the audience. I would like the story we tell in the film to reach the audience with the same strength and poetry with which we have worked throughout the process. And above all, I would like the film to provoke reflection and debate outside the cinema, so that people go out into the street wanting to find out more about the little stories told in the documentary.

Do you think there are enough platforms and festivals that value documentary film in its rightful place?

We are at a moment in the history of cinema where we must act to avoid stagnation and homogenisation of narratives. The new programming and exhibition models run the risk of favouring standardised storytelling and sidelining dissident films that seek to tell things differently. Initially, the rise of the internet favoured the emergence of small platforms that served to disseminate films that sought to renew the way of telling things. But nowadays, little by little, the big conglomerates are starting to stifle small-scale exhibition and it is very difficult to compete with them. Therefore, all this distribution and exhibition of riskier films is proving to be very difficult. We should work together to support alternative cinema. Even so, there are still many festivals and platforms that strongly support cinema on the sidelines and it is thanks to them that our films can reach the public. The work done by all these parties is immense.

What plans do you have for the documentary after its presentation at the San Sebastian Festival?

Once we have finished the production side of the film we will take on the complicated task of getting it to the public. Our work is meaningless if it is not seen by the viewers. That's why exhibition at festivals is indispensable. We are creating a distribution and exhibition strategy so that the film is known and reaches as many people as possible, which includes showing it at festivals, theatrical release, digital platforms, television, etc.

Are there any other projects you are working on?

The particularity of our production company, Zazpi T'erdi, is that it is a creative collective. In all our projects, however personal they may be, the work is always collective and members are fully involved. We are currently working on a new documentary feature film project, ‘Eltzegorra’, directed by our colleague David Aguilar. It is a documentary about a traditional Basque instrument, which is forbidden to be played. We are in the development phase and we are very happy with where we are in terms of the production of the project.