Films
Aro berria / A New Era
With ecstatic sequences reminiscent of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain, this complex portrait of new-age commune life is a striking feature debut.
It’s 1978, and Spanish society is struggling to find a post-dictatorship identity in the wake of Franco’s death. A host of activist workers from a Basque factory, disillusioned by the seeming inevitability of capitalism, attempt a complete rebellion, setting out to join a commune in rural Navarre.
Eme (played by a magnetic Maite Mugerza Ronse) wants to believe that Arco Iris offers a new way of living, but she soon learns it’s just as political as a picket line: the commune is riddled with personality clashes and ideological disagreements, and its sexual practices are underpinned by patriarchal power imbalances. Despite what the thousands of pilgrims who flock to its large-scale spiritual rituals might think, this rainbow family isn’t particularly harmonious.
It’s 1978, and Spanish society is struggling to find a post-dictatorship identity in the wake of Franco’s death. A host of activist workers from a Basque factory, disillusioned by the seeming inevitability of capitalism, attempt a complete rebellion, setting out to join a commune in rural Navarre.
Eme (played by a magnetic Maite Mugerza Ronse) wants to believe that Arco Iris offers a new way of living, but she soon learns it’s just as political as a picket line: the commune is riddled with personality clashes and ideological disagreements, and its sexual practices are underpinned by patriarchal power imbalances. Despite what the thousands of pilgrims who flock to its large-scale spiritual rituals might think, this rainbow family isn’t particularly harmonious.
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