Txori Maitea
2021 · 12m · España
Directed by Javier Celay
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Ainhoa and Mikel, two siblings from Madrid, undertake a journey full of feelings and contradictions towards Leoz, a village in Navarra, to fulfil their father's last wish: to scatter his ashes there.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a competent grief film that does exactly what you'd expect—two siblings, ashes, a pilgrimage, tender moments at the destination. The Basque setting promises friction but never delivers anything that actually surprises; this feels like it was programmed, not fought for.
Celay understands the formal language of the elegiac journey: the way landscape becomes a character, how silence between siblings can carry more weight than dialogue, the restraint that allows a scattering of ashes to become ritual rather than melodrama. This sits comfortably in a lineage of European family dramas that trust their audience's patience.
The choice to shoot in this particular Navarran geography—those specific grays and greens—becomes the film's emotional backbone rather than backdrop, and it's that commitment to letting place do the heavy lifting instead of score or forced vulnerability that makes the whole thing land.