Film Info
Arraianos

Film Information

Exhibition Title	Arraianos
Director	Eloy Enciso
Country
Year	2012
Format	DCP
Colour	Color
Duration	70'

Cast:

Celsa Araujo, Antonio Ferreira, Eulalia González, Aurora Salgado

Credits:

G: Eloy Enciso, José Manuel Sande
F: Mauro Herce
E: Manuel Muñoz
S: Vasco Pimentel, Tiago Matos
P: Eloy Enciso, Carlos Esbert
CP: Ártika Films, Zeitun Films

dates & times ticket

tickets

Synopsis

Border towns always have a sort of irremovable identifying category that turns them into pure essence and, in time, fixes them in a state of eternal foreignness. Eloy Enciso’s characters work almost as an exact archetype of this condition: they are the population of Couto Mixto, a legendary place in the border between Galicia and Portugal with a population of two hundred and twenty seven square kilometers.

For seven hundred years, and up to the 19th century, the town didn’t depend on the crowns of Spain nor Portugal and it enjoyed such privileges as tax exemption, free trade, and the power to grant asylum to those persecuted by the law in both kingdoms. Taking as a starting point O bosque, by playwright Jenaro Marinhas del Valle, Arraianos recognizes itself in some noble referents, mostly Straub and Huillet’s Sicilia! But the film just uses them for impulse, and flies up towards its own, unheard of territory, and captivates us with the strength of an old daguerreotype in which the everyday life of current inhabitants coexists with the spectral presence of those who once populated that Iberian Brigadoon. FG