Zumiriki (2019)

Zumiriki is a documentary film directed by Oskar Alegria.

Returning to the River Arga in Navarre, where he played as a child, Alegria builds a small cabin on the riverbank opposite an island that has since disappeared beneath the water following the construction of a dam. Living in isolation for four months, accompanied by two hens and a small vegetable garden, he attempts to reconnect with his childhood memories and recover a landscape that has become almost invisible.

The title, Zumiriki, is an old Basque word meaning “island in the middle of a river”. Inspired by his father's recordings of local landscapes, plants and birds, and the Basque words used to name them, Alegria reflects on the relationship between language, nature and memory. Through an intimate and experimental exploration of a vanished childhood world, the film asks what remains of a place when its landscape disappears, and how cinema might preserve the fragile traces of a culture, a language and a personal past.

Learn more about the film here