Gaua

This dark Basque fairy tale is a witches’ brew of macabre fantasy, folk horror and sexual liberation. Kattalin is caught between duty and desire, people and parish – at the mercy of judgments both sacred and profane.

Gaua, Basque for “night”, centres on a village in what is now Navarre, northern Spain, during the time of the Inquisition. Fleeing an abusive husband, Kattalin stumbles into the forest at witching hour to find three old women sharing stories. As their tall tales unfold in several chapters, the village’s dark secrets are revealed – a tangled web of stories that implicate the righteous and the wicked alike.

The resulting fable explores the struggles of forbidden love, ancient faiths and community bonds – all under the shadow of sexual repression, Castilian orthodoxy and gendered violence. At the margins of Spain’s inquisitorial authority, damnation comes to punish the wicked – but whose justice will prevail? The hand of the Catholic church, or something much older, lurking in the woods?

This third Basque-language feature from Paul Urkijo Alijo casts a spell on Spanish history, resulting in a timeless folk tale of witchcraft, cultural colonisation and fornication.

– Callum McLean

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