Under attack: film about Basque conflict that has everyone talking

A film by a Basque director which explores the northern Spanish region's conflict has kicked up a political storm, with politicians calling for it to be banned.

Julio Medem's documentary La Pelota Vasca (The Basque Ball; skin against stone) which goes on Spanish release on Thursday and will be shown in London next month, features 70 Basque people who hold a wide range of views talking about the conflict. It created a furore before its debut last week at the San Sebastian film festival.

Two participants tried to remove their voices, claiming that the result was less objective than they expected. Others denounced the documentary as biased because their opinions were not included.

Maria San Gil, a conservative town councillor in San Sebastian who goes everywhere with bodyguards after receiving death threats, urged the festival's organisers to pull the film "in support of all those who feel attacked by this documentary". Medem's film was also condemned by Pilar de Castillo, the Culture Minister, as a platform for separatist violence. The minister, who had not see the documentary, added that it "treats unjustly people who have suffered from terrorism".

The film, which is mobilising public opinion, comes as the regional government of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) launches a plan to achieve Basque sovereignty by consensus.

Medem said yesterday at the film's preview in Madrid: "I didn't expect all this polemic, especially from those who refused to be in it. I did what I could with the voices who spoke to me. I wanted to show all the different angles of Basque opinion, and reflect the Basque conflict in all its aspects. I believe I reflect the views and the sufferings of two-thirds of Basques."

Interspersed with noisy and claustrophobic scenes of the Basques' national game of pelota - a sort of squash with handbaskets - and scenes of the region, the film interviews Basques whose opinions span the political terrain between armed separatists and conserve Spanish hardliners.

A university professor speaks while his bodyguard sits beside him; a widow describes how Eta shattered her life when they murdered her policeman husband; a young politician tells how his leg was blown off; a woman crosses Spain to see her Eta husband in prison for a few minutes; another describes how police tortured her during questioning on suspected Eta contacts.

Writers, journalists and local politicians of all parties (except Madrid's ruling Popular Party) recount their experiences, and try explain the conflict and how it might be resolved. They are voices that any visitor to the Basque country would encounter, but which are rarely aired in mainstream Spanish political or cultural circles.

"I came with two commitments: to non-violence, and the pursuit of dialogue," Medem said yesterday. "But I tried to respect the opinions of all I spoke to. Absolute truth doesn't exist, and everyone has their right to a small part of the truth."

So polarised has the Basque conflict become that the very mention of the word "dialogue" prompts accusations that Medem is soft on terrorism.

But his stand reflects a deeply rooted Spanish tradition whereby artists and cultural figures open up areas of public debate that politicians have closed off.

The film does not feature questions or voiceover, but instead reveals the opinions, intercut one after another. "Less a dialogue than an assemblage of monologues," said one critic.

Medem, who made Lucia and Sex and Lovers of the Arctic Circle started on La Pelota Vasca two years ago, "horrified" he says by "lynchmob campaigns of slander and lies against Basque nationalism by the PP government" during regional elections won by the conservative Basque Nationalists.

Medem squeezed hours of footage into 75 minutes, cutting between speakers in mid-soundbite. He did this, he says, to eliminate pauses and hesitations and to include more voices. "I expect the viewer will understand I'm being honest and faithful to their views and not manipulating them."

This film is no polemic. Yet it has set everyone talking in what appears, at last, to be the beginning of a political debate.