Original Title: Loreak
Ane (Nagore Aranburu) lives a quiet unfulfilled life, trapped in a seemingly loveless marriage, until she suddenly starts to receive bouquets of flowers anonymously, once a week. Meanwhile, Tere (Itziar Aizpuru) wants nothing more than a grandchild, but her only son Beñat (Josean Bengoetxea) and his wife Lourdes (Itziar Ituño) have other plans. A sudden, tragic event jolts all of their lives into a new reality, and flowers start to appear anonymously once again, but this time, instead of passion, they represent an emotional memory. With a deep compassion for their characters, directors Jose Mari Goenaga and Jon Garaño examine the unexpected reverberations of a simple yet charged gesture while reflecting on loss, memory, and missed connections.
FILMMAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Flowers (Loreak) is the second film directed by the Garaño-Goenaga duo. Their previous film, 80 egunean (For 80 Days), participated in more than 100 international festivals, including Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, San Sebastian International Film Festival (winner, San Sebastian Film Commission Prize and the Sebastiane Award for best film with LGBT subject matter), Montreal World Film Festival and Cairo International Film Festival, winning over 30 prizes and becoming the most-awarded Basque film to date. Thanks to the successful career of their production company, Moriarti, they are considered the standard-bearers of new Basque filmmaking.
Jon Garaño studied journalism and marketing in the Basque University (EHE-UPV) and film in Sarobe and San Diego (USA). In 2001, he co-founded the production company Moriarti where he works as a director, producer and screenwriter. His short films have won awards in over 100 competitions and his documentaries have been broadcast in more than fifteen countries.
After studying business in San Sebastian, Jose Mari Goenaga studied film in Sarobe. In 2001, he co-founded the production company Moriarti. Beyond the short films he has directed (among them multi award-winning Tercero B, Sintonía and Lagun Mina, which together have garnered over 150 prizes), he has co-written and co-directed the animated feature Supertramps (nominated for best animation at the Goya Awards in 2005), and the feature documentary Lucio, which premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Documentary Goya Award in 2007.