Ander

Forty-something Ander leads an isolated existence. As well as tending to the family farm he works part-time in a local bicycle factory. His conservative mother bemoans the fact that his sister, fourteen years his junior, is getting married before him. Ander inhabits a world where men are expected to behave in a particular way and women are expected to know their place. But when Ander suffers an accident that necessitates new plans be put in place for the temporary running of the farm, José enters his life and gently questions so many of the absolutes around which it has been built. Roberto Castón’s debut feature, winner of a CICAE prize for Best Film in Berlin’s Panorama, proffers a sensitive examination of a budding relationship between two contrasting personalities against the lush, imposing landscape of the Basque countryside. Josean Bengoetxea gives a beautifully understated performance as the middle-aged man whose certainties are called into question by the outsider who enters his world. Castón never shies from showing the harsh realities of this rural society, but his is a vision marked by a remarkable compassion for all his characters and a profound understanding of the many combinations of community offered by our fragmented contemporary world. —bfi