The Basque Country has become an increasingly attractive place to make films and television.

In Bizkaia alone, audiovisual employment rose 50.5% between 2014 and 2024, while the number of companies linked to the sector climbed from 284 to 448. In 2025, the Bilbao Bizkaia Film Commission supported 219 shoots with an estimated economic impact of €138.1 million ($158.45 million).

The boom has also complicated a simple question: What, exactly, is a Basque production? Is it a project that shoots in the territory, one backed by a Basque company, one made in Euskara, or one whose creative control, intellectual property and long-term economic value remain there?

For Xabi Berzosa of San Sebastian-based Irusoin, the legal answer is relatively simple.

“From a legal standpoint, if a film is produced by a Basque production company, it’s Basque. That’s simply how it is defined.”

Then he offers the complication. Irusoin is a co-producer on Nanni Moretti’s latest film “It Will Happen Tonight,” alongside such companies as Fandango and BTeam Prods.

“The film is Basque, as well as Italian and French,” Berzosa says. “It’s shot in Italy and in the Basque Country, in Italian. … We don’t really feel that’s a portrait of Basque filmmaking nowadays, of course, but legally it’s Basque.”

For filmmaker Koldo Almandoz, whose Basque-language feature “The Last Goodbye” plays out of competition in San Sebastian’s Official Selection this year, the answer lies somewhere beyond legal definitions. It has to do, he says, with “the soul,” with “the culture, the language, the crews and the intention of the films.”

He is blunter about productions arriving primarily because of tax incentives. “You can call it co-production, but we all know that it’s like they are working as commission agents,” he says. “I don’t consider those Basque productions.”

Iker Ganuza, president of producers’ association EPE-IBAIA and a producer at Lamia Producciones, approaches the same question from an industrial perspective. “A Basque production is not simply a production filmed in the Basque Country,” he says. For Ganuza, the key questions are where decisions are made, where intellectual property remains, how much Basque talent and business are involved and how much value stays in the region.

If he had to choose one criterion, it would be “deep-rooted business and creative presence, along with decision-making capacity.”

That word — deep-rooted — sits uneasily beside an industry that is increasingly mobile. Berzosa puts the principle more simply. “Productions that come for financial reasons will leave for financial reasons.”

None of the producers argues that attracting international productions is a mistake. “Major international productions have obviously a very positive impact,” Ganuza says. “They create jobs, generate economic activity, and boost international visibility.”

But, he adds, “once filming wraps up, the intellectual property, business decisions, and much of the future value leave the country.” “Both activities are important, but they are not the same.”

Berzosa makes a similar distinction between servicing and co-producing. “The obvious solution is to service that shooting,” he says. “You are hired, they come and they go.”

With Moretti’s film, Irusoin instead became a co-producer, gaining ownership and a deeper involvement in the project. Services, Berzosa says, “help people to work and to have continuity,” but “they don’t develop a local established industry for the long term.”

Almandoz worries about what happens to that local infrastructure if conditions change.

“If sometime these fiscal advantages disappear, all these little home companies we had, that were working for us, now absorbed by bigger companies, are they gonna stay, or are they gonna go… to Madrid or Barcelona or Paris?”

He is not predicting collapse. “People are working. There’s an industry. We are growing. We are learning a lot.”But, he adds: “We want to pass from zero to 100 in three years, and I don’t think it’s the way.”

Language adds another layer. For Berzosa, a film written, shot and released in Euskara is one particularly clear example of a production with cultural weight, but it is not a requirement for something to qualify as Basque. Ganuza likewise argues that the language must be specially protected, while cautioning against making it the sole measure.

“We can tell Basque stories to the world and also produce universal stories from the Basque Country.” The broader challenge, then, is not simply how to attract more production, but what remains when those productions leave.

Ganuza says the next phase must focus on making sure international investment strengthens local companies rather than displacing them.

“The main problem is not a lack of opportunities,” he says. “It is precisely the opposite: there is a huge opportunity, and we must ensure that growth does not leave behind the companies that have built this sector right here.” That may ultimately become a useful measure of success, and one relevant far beyond the Basque Country.

“We have to start talking about where we want the Basque film industry to be in 2030,” Ganuza says, “not just how many film shoots we’ll have next year.”