05/09/2008

In summer 2007, eight troubled youngsters try to overcome their traumas aboard the sailing boat Urdaneta, using the sea as a cure. The documentary Palabras que vienen del mar (“Words that Come from the Sea”) – which hits Spanish screens today – recounts this experience. The latest work by veteran Basque independent film director Ángel Amigo focuses on the resulting dynamics – at times unbearable to watch – between the teenagers, their therapists and the crew.

A former ETA militant, Amigo first came to attention after penning the script for Imanol Uribe’s Escape from Segovia, about his experience as a prisoner. The second film he wrote, Ander eta Yul – which also looked at the terrorist group – won a Goya Award in 1990.

In Palabras que vienen del mar, the director tackles a completely different subject but uses the same setting, for the documentary was shot on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, with the ensuing difficulties of filming at sea.

In their production notes, the film’s team describe the “hellish” experience of shooting on a boat. They write: “Contrary to what people usually imagine, the sea is a very noisy place”.

However, the appeal of the film – produced by Zurriola Movies and Compañía Vasca de Audiovisuales – doesn’t lie in the adventures of the crew’s novice sailors, but in the account of the shared experience of these teenagers, who have been moved away from their surroundings in order to facilitate their social insertion.

“Why put a group of troubled youngsters on board a sailing boat?” Luis Lasurtegi – president of the NGO who participated in the project – asked himself. He concluded: “Because the sea is the perfect place for a radical break with one’s surroundings, an intense psychosomatic change”.

Palabras que vienen del mar is being launched domestically by Barton Films.