918 gau

Synopsis

On 4 October 2007, Arantza Santesteban was arrested and sent to prison. She has many memories of those long days: the endless laps of the courtyard, the swimming contests, Rasha's story of jail after jail… After 918 nights locked up, Arantza is finally free to walk the streets again and pick up the threads of her life. As she starts to look through the archive of images and words she put together—her compilation of darkness and light—she weaves together a narrative of her broken story. The passing of time, isolation from the outside world, the physical and psychological consequences of being locked up, the dark spaces of domination: this film explores the firsthand experience of life behind bars.

Bio/Filmo

Arantza Santesteban (Pamplona, 1979) graduated in history from the University of the Basque Country, before going on to earn a diploma in creative documentary making at the Francesca Bonnemaison Centre for Women's Culture, Barcelona. Her work includes the short Euritan (2017). Since 2019 she has been working on her PhD at the University of Lisbon with Susana de Sousa Dias, exploring the intertwined issues of representation in film, feminism and the Basque political conflict.