Flowers for Grandma: Identity Struggles in the New Basque Cinema

Abstract

Since cinema is a powerful tool for depicting and critically addressing identity issues, in this article I compare two films that belong to the post-2005 wave of new Basque cinema: the urban Loreak/ Flowers (Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga, 2014) and Amama [Grandma] / When a Tree Falls (Asier Altuna, 2015), set on a baserri , the Basque farmhouse. In this new wave of Basque-language films, the identities of city and country dwellers are shown with similar relevance (albeit often in collision) and, by carrying out a film analysis of these two worlds, I shed some light on the murky relationship between Basque cinema and Basque culture and society. The article underlines that Loreak represents an urban identity (with a more individualistic slant), far removed from the baserri , although vestiges of that world do appear on occasion; and that in Amama , the collective baserri identity – seen as the paradigm of Basqueness – clashes with the eminently urban identity of the baserri offspring, who struggle to reconcile these two world views (to the extent they can be reconciled). Yet it seems as if the characters in both films are drawn together by an invisible thread in which the Basque language plays a key role.