This year’s retrospective in the course of exground filmfest 21’s focus on the current Spanish cinema is dedicated to the internationally renowned Basque director Julio Médem. By means of six feature films and one documentary, we trace his exciting artistic development. This means his path from his father’s camera, which he used to shoot his first filmic experiments at the age of twelve, starring his sister in the leading role, through his latest film CAÓTICA ANA.
As early as in his first feature film COWS (VACAS), Julio Médem’s interest in inner processes and the dark side of human existence can be detected. In his second feature film, THE RED SQUIRREL (LA ARDILLA ROJA), the audience has to wait until the very end before the protagonist’s complex interdependencies and the inner reasons for their actions is being clarified. With this masterpiece, Médem not only won numerous major film awards, among them at the International Film Festival in Cannes and at the Goya awards (the Spanish „Oscars“), but also was successful in German cinemas, thereby getting known to a wider audience.
In EARTH (TIERRA), Médem clarifies the bond and the dependence of man with nature and its mystical powers, which man tries to dissolve forcibly. In the Spanish-French coproduction and box office smash THE LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (LOS AMANTES DEL CÍRCULO POLAR) and its follow-up SEX AND LUCÍA (LUCÍA Y EL SEXO), the director weaves a delicate and hard-to-see-through web of relationships and feelings, by repeatedly pyramiding the levels of space and time anew.
Shooting the documentary THE BASQUE BALL: SKIN AGAINST STONE (LA PELOTA VASCA. LA PIEL CONTRA LA PIEDRA), about the ancient political conflict in the Basque country, was an inner necessity for the director, which cost him lots of time and power due to the almost unbearable discussions regarding the film.
The heated, partly hostile debate robbed him off so much energy that he only managed to complete his next artistic project four years later: his current film CAÓTICA ANA, which he dedicated to his late sister and artist Ana.
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