Growing up during Bilbao's Semana Grande

The title of thedebut film by Basque filmmaker trained in chess, Sara Fantova admirably captures the intermittent and hesitant nature of this transitional stage between adolescence and adulthood in which Jone, the young protagonist, moves. What the title doesn't allow us to guess is that doubt and insecurity are light years away from the creative maturity of a filmmaker (also very young) who resolves her first feature film with a stubborn and surprising confidence in what she is narrating.

Made with limited production means from which the director extracts the most, the film could be included in the naturalistic current in Catalan cinema driven by, among others, Mar Coll, Belén Funes or Carla Simón – the intergenerational epistolary dialogue between father and daughter as a tool for overcoming trauma Pilgrimage–, but manages to unleash a unique personality and energy by situating its minimal plot over the nine days of Bilbao’s Semana Grande.

Applying documentary strategies to a work of fiction, the filmmaker manages to capture fragments of youth culture in the Basque Country and record ecstatic passages of celebration and festivity without ever losing sight of Jone’s face, the true center of the performance. The dazzling newcomer Olaia Aguayo embodies the protagonist with a combination of carnality and vulnerability that create a kind of Basque version of Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Color.