Akerbeltz, las brujas y el inquisidor
2010 · 10m · España
Directed by César Urbina Vitoria
Genres: fantasy, historical, horror
From the dungeon of the Holy Office prison in Logroño, full of prisoners accused of witchcraft, a magical chant escapes through the bars, crosses valleys and mountains, and wakes a boy in the village of Zugarramurdi in the middle of the night.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 10-minute Basque witch-trial fever dream that treats the Inquisition like a horror-folk opera—subversive enough to work, weird enough to stick, but I suspect Margot's going to clock the formal architecture here before I can claim it as properly unhinged.
Urbina Vitoria positions this within a lineage of European folk-horror and historical surrealism, where the chant becomes both narrative engine and formal principle; the film's restraint in revealing its magical premise rewards the kind of close attention that separates genuine craft from mere atmosphere.
The decision to let the chant carry the whole film—source of dread, geographical bridge, and the only real 'action' for nine minutes—is the kind of economy that turns a micro-budget into something that feels inevitable rather than constrained.