The feature film Verabredung (2017) by Maider Oleaga has entered through the door opened by the act of opening to the Lekeitio movie theater, in the 41st edition in which the section has focused on the Bilbaíno filmmaker. In this edition of Euskal Zine Bilera. Oleaga will release at the end of this year the documentary Muga da pausoa, a work that has been done around Elbira Zipitria.

Verabredung is the succession of the film The Past Site Berlin, directed by Oleaga in 2016, and in it the director proposes a reflection on the German capital, investigating the lives of several citizens of Berlin today. In 1941, the first lehendakari, José Antonio Agirre, resided in Berlin during his years in exile. In 2016, this city is still home to many people who want to rebuild their lives. Oleaga crosses these two realities in the film, within the landscapes that make up the imaginary of Berlin.

The voices of Verabredung (Quote) are five people: Syrian refugees who dream of rebuilding their homeland, a Kurdish woman who is forced to live outside the family and the social codes of the culture in which she was born, like three Basques who move within music and art: clarinetist, plastic artist and conductor. Oleaga creates different visions of the city through the interaction of fragments of the daily life of these young people, with excerpts from the day to day of the lehendakari Agirre. He uses quotes collected from the book De Guernica to New York, passing through Berlin (1942), where for seventeen months those which the lehendakari wrote day by day, hidden inside a doll, but which were not lost. She quotes that she dialogues with the reflections that the city generates for the young people and thus constructs, as a reflection, a map between the different opinions about the city.

The story of each character is related to their way with the trajectory of the city and the lehendakari. The Syrian has been exiled in Berlin fleeing war and found in the city a new Berlin, rebuilt today after being destroyed during the Second World War. There he wants to be invited and not take refuge. The Kurdish people have sought in the city the tools needed to reinvent themselves. Another language, another life, another identity. The clarinetist, precisely, is what makes us think that it has been lost. It reflects the impossibility of abandoning it after reaching that city and its desire to find itself in it. The plastic artist describes a deep city where you can't expect anything because everything dances in a precarious balance. It highlights anonymity towards the people around it, a sort of reset. The conductor is particularly attracted to him, with absolute anonymity, and talks about the living movement of those around him. The fragility of relations is, moreover, a form of reciprocal transition.

The images and symbols of the city of Berlin, as well as the melodies created with clarinet and piano, have aroused reflections in the cinema. Around the outside (Berlin), from what we consider our environment (home), from what we desire (unattainable) or from the back of what we seek (here).