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.
“I wanted to make a film based on the images printed in my memory when I was a child…Rather than the factual influences, I wanted to portray the emotional connections that arise between the individual and the environs…I wanted to work on the musical plasticity of Galician language, trying to touch upon it with images…
The film deals with our grandparent’s generation, a generation I feel is a kind of hinge between two different eras. I was interested in the way we relate with what we used to be and particularly with what we do not fully understand…The experience of shooting in a “true” frontier showed us that the culmination of something is always the beginning of something else. Like the interminable and unreachable dream told by the woman in the film, an end is just a matter of perspective.” – Director Eloy Enciso