In many Western nations, democracy persists as the ideal for a society to function equitably and provide freedom to all citizens. Some countries have always operated under this political system, while others have had to fight across decades — sometimes even centuries — for a semblance of freedom in their daily lives. In modern human history, fascism and totalitarianism made Europe their playground, and WWI and WWII only compounded the death and violence spreading across the continent in the first half of the twentieth century.
Recently, Spanish filmmakers have begun to address their country’s grisly modern history under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, which ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975. During his reign, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards were imprisoned and/or killed, while most of Europe thrived in a post-WWII economy. Franco’s sudden death in 1975 shocked the nation awake to a new national era. Robert Bahar and Almudena Carracedo’s The Silence of Others (2018) and Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers (2021) confront the generational trauma passed down to younger Spaniards as a result of the dictatorship, which defies Spain’s Pact of Forgetting, which aims for citizens to forget that the totalitarian regime ever existed. What, then, is the correct way to address collective trauma, and how can art function as a tool for historicizing national recovery?
First-time filmmaker Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe employs a provocative historiographical method to capture an underseen aspect of post-Franco Spain in Aro Berria (New Age) (2025). Making its North American premiere as an official selection of New Directors/New Films 2026, the film charts the journey of San Sebastian metal workers clawing their way to a fair labor contract with their employer, but problematic union leadership and an unstable economic landscape prevent them from implementing their progressive ideals.
From the film’s opening shot of workers snaking through the factory to protest the union’s capitulation, Agirretxe demonstrates a tasteful control of the camera that transforms mundane scenery into intriguing shots of human bodies clashing with industrial backgrounds. She also acknowledges the dual identities present in this region of Spain, including a title card in Basque and Spanish that explains the workers’ protest and animates the text to snake across the screen in the same manner as the workers. This highly stylized propensity endures throughout the film and only increases in magnitude when Agirretxe transports us to the Basque countryside years later.
Now splintered into different stages of life, some of the progressive metal workers have fled for the mountains and started their own commune grounded in Buddhist and Hindu philosophies, often conflating the two in their imagery and spiritual goals. Eme, played by the striking Maite Mugerza Ronse, travels to this remote village to reconnect with her former comrades and discovers an elaborate community thriving without outside intervention.
At first, the commune seems healthy in its dedication to peace and wellness. Inside the vibrant red tent sprawled on the front lawn, the community engages in holistic meditation practices that incorporate breathing exercises, jumping and shaking, and screaming repetitively to release all uncomfortable emotions. These ritual scenes can play for over five minutes at a time, which did prompt some walk-out at the Museum of Modern Art’s Titus 2 screening; however, Agirretxe asks us to join her in this exercise in patience as we sit with what this community practices to feel something, anything, in a country that has left many of them behind in its reconstruction.
Below the Holy Mountain-esque aesthetic that Agirretxe constructs here lies something much darker, and the commune’s leader hints at this with his generalizations about “the soul awakening” through their rituals. These acts range from blindfolding one another and stripping bare to engaging in tantra sex with the whole adult community, teetering on exploitation, and Eme notices how the men usually lead the women into these activities under the guise of liberation.
Comparisons to the cult-like activities in Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) are apt, but Agirretxe never leans into unsavory territory with nudity or violence. In fact, the rawness here breaks through the screen and caresses you cautiously, tempting you to give yourself over to pleasure that serves more than yourself.
Eventually, Eme snaps out of the hallucinogenic haze hovering over this community, partly sparked by the men fetishizing pregnancy and submission to the God-like guru (played by Oliver Laxe in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo) that renames all commune members in the name of tantra. One of Eme’s friends even asks her what her new name, “Mayani,” means, to which she laughs and simply replies, “Who knows!” In reference to the film’s title, no one can pinpoint what this new age methodology actually provides that modern living cannot.
As Eme steals the commune’s horse and rides back to civilization, we’re left with a community still wandering toward some salvation. The rest of Spain has moved on to the next chapter in its national history, and those who followed this barren side of counter-culture are lost in its wake. We often pay attention to how countries as a whole recover from political turmoil, but the margins contain moral and political lessons far more intricate than the black-and-white national solutions. Uncovering lost stories like the one in Aro Berria adds another patch onto Spain’s mangled post-Franco history, and hopefully Agirretxe continues expanding this lineage.
Review Courtesy of Kyle Saavedra
Feature Image Courtesy of New Directors/New Films