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.
“My films grow from spending time with people and places, allowing fiction to emerge from those encounters,” Ekain Albite tells Variety. 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. “Being Basque gives me a very strong awareness of language, identity, memory and belonging,” she says. “But I don’t see it as a boundary. It is my starting point.”
Across their work, identity, memory and place are testing grounds. “I want cinema to provoke questions rather than provide answers,” says Asier Urbieta. 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. “I wonder how much one’s mother tongue can shape a director’s particular way to approach filmmaking,” she explained. 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. San Sebastián awarded it the Casa Wabi–ESCINE residency prize in 2024.
Albite’s filmmaking grew out of collaboration at Barcelona film school ESCAC, where he formed Colectivo Negu with Adrià Roca, Nicolau Mallofré and Mikel Ibarguren. After making shorts together, the group directed “Negu Hurbilak,” which received a Special Mention from the Filmmakers of the Present jury at Locarno in 2023.
He now takes sole directing responsibility with “Akira,” his first feature as a solo director and an Ikusmira Berriak 2026 project. Set between the Basque Country and Georgia, the film centers on a Georgian scrap dealer whose familiar world is unsettled by the arrival of a relative and a journey into the night. “It explores exile and the quiet unraveling of familiar worlds within an endless night,” Albite says. “I’m excited to extend my work beyond one territory and discover how cinema can bring distant lives together.”
Who answers for a death when the territory itself changes hands? Urbieta built his 2025 fiction feature debut “Pheasant Island” around that question, bringing Goya Winner Jone Laspiur (“Ane”) and Sambou Diaby into a drama shaped by the Spain-France frontier. It played last year’s San Sebastian as well as Göteborg. “I’m particularly interested in the border, both as a physical and psychological space,” he says. His next film, “Islandia,” will see Urbieta shoot a single continuous take. “It’s an enormous technical challenge, but also a way of putting the characters, the actors and myself at risk — and that interests me greatly,” he told Variety.
Having led Ladyred Producciones since 2010 and founded women’s culture platform KulturFemme, González Martínez brings her documentary feature debut “Daughters of the Sea” (“Las hijas del mar”) to Zinemira. The film finds affinities between Jeju’s women divers and women whose work connects them to the Basque coast.
“I’m especially excited by projects that allow unexpected international collaborations to emerge,” she says. Already in development are a further “Daughters of the Sea” chapter spanning the Basque Country, Galicia and Brittany, and “Mirror Mirror,” a documentary series examining cultural ecosystems in different countries. Her slate gives that international ambition a concrete next step.
Giner’s journey from Barakaldo to a feature premiere has included film school in Los Angeles, employment at MGM and international relations work at El Deseo, where he also assisted Pedro Almodóvar.
Following autobiographical series “Yo, adicto,” his debut “This Solitude” (“Esta soledad”) lands in New Directors. Oriol Pla and Marina Salas play a separated couple for whom earning a living and caring for family leave little room to recover their footing. Giner wrote the film with Luisa Matienzo; Filmax has set an Oct. 30 Spanish theatrical release. It brings a long industry apprenticeship, and TV breakout into a new phase.
Bilbao-born Norma Vila makes the leap to features with “Carapace” (“Salitre”), a psychological horror film that turns empty-nest anxiety into something disturbing and physical. Starring Nagore Aranburu (“Querer,” “Sundays”) and Haizea Carneros, the film follows a mother whose terror of losing her teenage daughter begins to infect both their home and relationship. Vila came up through camera crews before directing prize-winning fantasy shorts “Jules D.” and “El fin de todas las cosas.” Now her debut lands directly in Sitges’ Official Fantastic Competition before opening San Sebastián’s Horror and Fantasy Film Festival. It marks Vila as a potentially distinctive new Basque genre voice.