Arraianos

Eloy Enciso Cachafeiro : 2012

The inhabitants of a small village lost in the woodlands between Galicia and Portugal live and work in a quiet routine. From time to time, brief conversations arise amongst them. Surrounded by an endless forest, incapable of finding a way out, the Arraianos ask themselves about the reasons for their confinement, wondering if such things as sunlight, free will or a horizon really exist. One day, a stranger arrives; the possibility of change, a way out, a means of purification. What is left after the end, when all has been consumed? Somewhere between reality and fable, the Arraianos play out their lives to make a portrait of the rural world and its obstinate resistance to disappear, a picture of life as it is. The fictional elements of the piece come from a play by Marinhas del Valle, The Forest, written in the 1960s as a parable of Franco's dictatorship, but also a great portrait of the Galician soul, their tragic existentialism. The film's documentary elements thus present a more frontal portrait of the soul of these autarkic people. As the seasons change and the signs of apocalypse grow – a fire rages in the forest – one man promises salvation, whilst another proclaims the end of the world is coming. In this moving work, memory floats in space, and a way of life dies before one's eyes.