Negu Hurbilak

Four years ago, a group of students from ESCAC, who shared similar concerns and viewpoints, began developing projects together. Their first project, "Erroitz", laid the foundation for a journey of creation and complicity that is still ongoing today. A year later, they produced the short film "Laiotz", also filmed in the Basque Country, and before that, they reflected on the Catalan rural reality with "A rabassa morta". "Negu Hurbilak (The Approaching Winter)" (2023) is their first feature film, where the collective takes a step further to tell the story of an ‘iheslari’ in the turbulent political context of 2011 in Euskal Herria. 

The film had its world premiere at the 76th Locarno Film Festival, in the Cineasti del Presente section, where it received a special mention from the jury. It was also awarded at the Márgenes Madrid festival, winning the Young Jury Award in the Escáner section. The feature film has traveled through highly prestigious international film festivals such as SEMINCI, Cork International Film Festival, MedFilm Festival, International Film Festival of Uruguay, and more. "Negu hurbilak" premiered in commercial movie theaters on February 23, 2024.

The Negu Collective has developed a deeply collaborative working methodology, where creative decisions are not made hierarchically, but through a constant dialogue process among its members. This horizontal approach affects all stages of the filmmaking process, from writing to editing, building a cinema that emerges from the encounter with the territory, the people, and the circumstances of the shoot. Rather than imposing a pre-designed vision, the film draws on interaction with the real context, adopting an immersion method in which observation and listening are essential. 

Working with non-professional actors is one of the keys to their cinema. In Negu Hurbilak, the inhabitants of Zubieta not only play characters but also bring their own experience and gestures, generating an authenticity that cannot be achieved through conventional staging. This requires an adaptation process where the shooting schedule adjusts to the dynamics of the community, establishing a relationship of trust in which glances and silences carry as much weight as words. The camera does not impose itself on reality but becomes a recording device that captures what happens in its purest state, allowing chance and the natural dynamics of the environment to influence the film. The script is a flexible structure, constantly being rewritten as shooting progresses, leaving space for improvisation and adaptation to the unforeseen. The narrative is not built from a closed plan but from interaction with bodies, landscapes, and gestures. In editing, this approach remains present: the material is reviewed collectively, seeking a rhythm that respects the texture of the shooting and avoids a forced logic that could distort the organic nature of the images. Work is done with an awareness of time and silence, allowing the atmosphere to breathe and emotions to emerge without the need to underline them. The choice of 16mm is not just an aesthetic decision but a gesture that reinforces the materiality of the image and the ritual of shooting. The limitation of takes imposes a way of filming where each shot holds specific weight, capturing the presence of bodies and their relationship with space. Natural light, the texture of the grain, and the physicality of the environment are integrated into the narrative, making the film transcend the merely visual to become a sensory experience. 

The Negu Collective understands cinema as a shared construction, where each member contributes their unique sensibility in a constant search process. Their methodology is based on immersion in the territory, openness to chance, listening, and narrative flexibility, moving away from conventional production structures to create a cinema that is rooted in life itself. More than a way of making films, it is a way of being in the world, where the gaze becomes an act of resistance and the film a space of encounter.