Aro berria

In 1978, workers at a factory in Donostia, in the Spanish Basque Country, are debating a strike that ultimately never happens. For the most radical among them, fighting for better working conditions is no longer enough. As the revolution stalls on the factory floor, they seek it elsewhere: in a community in the mountains, where young people experiment with communal living, spirituality and sexual liberation. Love, possession and the limits of the body become a grey area. 

For her feature debut, Irati Gorostidi draws on almost ten years of research into Basque counterculture, to which she also has a personal connection: her own parents lived in such a community. Aro berria moves from the greyness of the factory to the green of the countryside, without turning that new freedom into an idyll. Political conviction clashes with desire, the collective with the individual. Old power structures do not simply get left behind.