UK Film Network

THE TIMES BFI 53^RD LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: 
14-29 October 2009 
Published by: Tremayne (Potter)

Monday 26 October

Ander

Dir-Scr.: Roberto Caston / with Josean Bengoetxea, Christian Esquivel, Mamen Rivera / Spain 2009 / 129 min.

Synopsis

Forty something Ander leads a closed life.  He runs the family farm.  His mother resents the fact that his sister, fourteen years his junior, is getting married before him.

Ander is part of a world where men must behave in a certain way and the women are to be seen and not heard.  But when Ander takes a fall, plans must be put in place for the temporary upkeep of the farm, Jose enters into his life and questions him on how everything has come to be the way it has around him.

This is Roberto Caston’s debut feature, a winner of the CICAE prize for Best Film at Berlin’s Panorama.  He manages to put across a thoughtful perception of a blossoming relationship between two very different characters, against a Basque countryside backdrop.

Josean Bengoetxea purposely downplays his performance of a middle aged man who begins to rethink the meaning of life as Jose becomes a part of it.

Caston is not afraid to show the harsh reality that comes of leading a rural life and has an innate understanding of the different types of community that exist in this muddled contemporary world we live in.