THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
On July 29, 2000, Juan Maria Jauregui, former socialist governor of the province of Guipuzcoa (the equivalent of the prefect), in Spain, was shot twice in the head by militants of the armed Basque separatist organization ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, “Basque country and freedom”), while having a drink in a café in Tolosa. Eleven years later, two members of the commando – including Ibon Etxezarreta, who was serving his sentence in prison and had in the meantime left the politico-military organization – expressed the desire to meet the governor’s widow, Maixabel Lasa. She was one of eleven relatives of victims who agreed to meet ex-members of ETA.
These prisoners who had broken with ETA wanted to ask for forgiveness, but these meetings were not self-evident, as the traumas were strong on both sides. Former ETA members took the risk of being seen as traitors in the eyes of the Basque organization, and the relatives of victims could be singled out as offering their executioners undeserved forgiveness. For the record, ETA, created in 1959 in reaction to Francoism, led an armed struggle for more than fifty years, causing the death on Spanish territory of 837 people (including 506 police and soldiers) – for its part, the ETA has counted 474 dead in its ranks. The long process of exiting the armed struggle, mentioned during initial discussions in 1977, will be completed between 2011 and 2017.
Directly inspired by the story of Maixabel Lasa, The Repentants, fiction by Spanish director Iciar Bollain, was a real success in Spanish theaters and won three Goyas (the equivalent of the French Césars), including Best Actress for Blanca Portillo, who plays Maixabel Lasa. Undoubtedly the accuracy of the actors – let us also mention Luis Tosar, in the role of Ibon Etxezarreta – and the force of the subject seduced the spectators, even if elsewhere The Repentants does not offer an unforgettable moment of cinema.
Public utility film
Academic in its direction, this drama joins so many other current films in a resilient and comforting vein. Iciar Bollain sticks to retracing reality through fiction, necessarily moving, where Thomas Lacoste’s documentary The Democratic Hypothesis, released in theaters in the spring of 2022, drew its strength from the unpublished testimonies of former historic members of ETA, who had chosen to work for the peace process. There is always that The Repentantswhich aims to share with as many people as possible the traumatic history of the armed struggle in Spain and speaks to us of dialogue and peace, is in itself of public utility.
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