What does Pedro Mari Otaño have to star in a movie?
It's a very interesting person. On the one hand, because it was weird among the bertsolaris of its time. Most of the bertsolaris back then were Carlists, and this was liberal, a bit weird. He was an expert, cultured, culturally meaningful man. And he was a pioneer, because when he had a bad throat, he used the verses, which gave a tremendous boost to the versification. Until then, as the verses were being cast, the wind carried them. He's a polyhedral person, with many edges. I would place it among the most interesting characters of the time: I compare the shadow of Otaño with that of Oteiza in the years 1950-60.

Besides being zizurkildarra...
[Laugh] Of course, I love this town a lot, and not just because I was born there. We started from a very young age singing the Coplas of Otaño. I spent five years in Zizurkil, but then we were living in Jaizubia, in Hondarribia, with my mother's cousins. When any party was celebrated, be it buried, baptized, apple harvest or meta, it was a good excuse to start singing. And to warm up the throat, they started with the cocks of Otaño to provoke it. At that time, I knew everyone. I live in Morriña because today there are very few young people who know the coplas of Otaño.

Does it consider it a personal project?Since its
inception it has been very personal. Of course, I've involved people on the road, especially the most important one for me, Koldo Izagirre. He has written very beautiful texts to me. As I wanted to keep the chronology, to talk about the evolution of Otaño, I have made the adaptation. Then there is something else: the women who have been around these kinds of famous characters have been very much suffering; now there is a lot of talk about Angela Kerexeta, who happened with Iparragirre. Madalen [María Magdalena Alberdi] would also live something like this. From a gender point of view, one of these banks was missing, some tweaks. That's what Leire Aranburu helped me in, and I'm so happy.

His era is as interesting as the figure of Otaño. Why?
It is a very interesting time, because the Basque Country, along with the loss of exiles, was disturbed, depressed and in a huge economic crisis. But at the same time, as things are, there were also years of rebirth, because then they began to create new ideas, to strengthen socialism, and to new nationalism. In our script, Txirrita tells Otaño: “We have to invent new things.” The works of Otaño offer us a chronology to analyze this time.

The film tells the last two decades of his life. Why?
These were his most fruitful years. He becomes ill from Argentina due to his nostalgia. He gets married and starts to form family. It's the decades of recovery. Today we are in a similar cycle: we have spent more time with autonomy than in the dictatorship, but this country has made little progress and perhaps in recent years we are taking steps backwards. I see the need to address new ideas and paths, to enter the era of rebirth if we do not want to stay behind as a people. I compare the time of Otaño, the years 1950-60 and current situations, as if every 60 years such cycles were given. At that time, our young people were forced to do America, and today they continue to watch how they are.

You want to get 750.000 euros for the project and you have put the challenge to get it in the neighborhood work. Why?
The big producers and television platforms of today are not interested in this story. If it's not full of violence, of sex, or if it's not one of those revisionist ETA narratives ... If the first weekend you don't have Christ's success at the window, you're broken. Today, a movie like Tasio was not going to go ahead, and they would throw it away. What we call author movies has fewer and fewer doors open. That is why we have to work other ways of seeing Basque cinema. My last film, Oreina de Koldo Almandoz, has been seen in 45 sites and had 25,000 viewers, that's nothing. And just like that, eh! The film in Basque that has been seen most has been large, but premiered throughout the state has had 150,000 spectators, with a budget of 4 million euros.

And so how do we do that?
We hope that this film will be seen, at least, in one hundred places in Euskal Herria. In addition, being focused on the new generations, we are collaborating with the network of Ikastolas and Public Schools, which the students will see for free. I want to make people, to bring the fruits back to the people and to bring our young people to Otaño. What we are asking is for parents to collaborate in buying tickets. We have put 30,000 on sale and we hope that they will all be sold. With the ikastolas there will only be 65,000 spectators, and that will be doubled in the public network. Over 200,000 people will see it. What we are looking for is for Basque cinema to be extended to other areas as well.