Lobster Soup took yesterday a €3,000 ($4,800) cash prize for best project at San Sebastian’s Lau Haizetara‘s Documentary Co-production Forum. It also won a second award for distribution.

Produced by Valencia’s Suica films, Basque Country’s REC Grabaketa Estudioa and Iceland’s Axfilms, Lobster Soup portrays a small community around Iceland’s Bryggjan café, where each morning its famous lobster soup is prepared. José Andreu and Rafael Molés will direct.

Other buzzed titles among the 14 projects pitched on Thursday were Matrioskas, Las niñas de la guerra, The Mystery of Pink Flamingos, There Was and There Wasn’t, and Niño de Elche.

A Basque production from Haruru Filmak and Sincro Producción, Matrioskas plumbs into the lives of five seemingly ordinary 90-something women who hide their extraordinary lives. Fleeing northern Spain during the Civil War, they lived in exile in the USSR and finally Cuba.

Produced by young Basque company Sr. y Sra, Niño de Elche scrutinizes the essence of flamenco and the singular personality of singer Niño de Elche, a child prodigy beloved by the flamenco community until he started playing around with the rigid rules of this form of art. Marc Sempere and Leire Apellaniz to direct.

Barcelona-based Japonica Films presents The Mystery of The Pink Flamingos, where a logical yet eccentric sound engineer dreams of the pink birds in rumination on kitsch and provocative culture surrounding the symbol of this handsome creature.

Organized by Basque producers lobby Ibaia, in partnership with fesLobster Soup wins double at San Sebastian’s Lau Haizetara Doc Co-pro Forum tival Industry Department, the Lau Haizetara Forum this year suggests a strong tradition –and a burgeoning present– that Catalonia and the Basque country have in documentary.

Basque companies lead three projects and co-produce on another two. Four projects originated from Catalonia’s production outfits. Madrid and Valencia present one each. Outside Spain, Norway, Italy, France and Germany bring one project each.

In Andrea Capranico’s There Was and There Wasn’t –from Italy’s Aquatic Films and Ladoc with Canada’s Ripley Point Pictures– a former Armenian terrorist embarks on a difficult reconciliation with his son Haig.

The Other Side of the River from Germany’s Doppelplusultra Film and TV Produktion follows Hala, a young Arab woman from a conservative Syrian city who wants to be free and find love but is planned to be married to an IS combatant.

France’s Sister Productions and Prima Luce teamed with leading BasqueTV and film producers Irusoin and Gastibeltza Filmak on The Democratic Hypothesis, chronicling the history of the Basque Conflict from the Spanish Civil War to its definitive dissolution in 2018.

The fourteen projects display a large diversity ranging from culinary art to anthropological issues with an emphasis on social, humanistic and political concerns.

Asier Altuna (Amama, Go!) directs Arzak Since 1897, produced by Bainet Zinema, about one of the best chef sagas in the world –the Arzaks, a symbiosis between a culinary nation and its growing documentary industry.

Barcelona-based Inicia Films and Trueday Films ally to present La flota de Indias, on the historical consequences the Spanish arrival in America and the creation of an unparalleled naval system: the Spanish Treasure Fleet.

Madrid’s Salon Indien Films and Linda Films team with Italy’s 39Films and India’s HY Pictures to depict a unique event in Nagorno Karabakh’s Great Wedding –700 couples married at the same time. Financed by an Armenian millionaire, this historic event was part of a national strategy to increase the birth rate.

Mal de caña comes from leading Barcelona TV company Batabat, trying to unveil some of the coercing mechanisms that sustain the contemporary plantation system in the Dominican Republic.

From Norway’s North Film, Newtopia, a documentary shot by director Audun Amundsen in the remote jungle of Mentawai, Indonesia, a family lives a traditional tribal lifestyle but is thrown into the contemporary world.

From Norway’s North Film, Newtopia, a documentary shot by director Audun Amundsen in the remote jungle of Mentawai, Indonesia, a family lives a traditional tribal lifestyle but is thrown into the contemporary world.

Spain’s Kepler Mission Films, Perro Negro Cine and White Leaf Producciones team on We Die, a documentary exposing the magical-realist conception of death in three very unique minority communities in Indonesia, India and Mexico.

Emilio Mayorga