Dear Tonina, Loreto, Wal, Viki, etc. :

I've gotten tired of the movies. I've been exhausted from rows and applause and screens. I only see the film that closes my eyes and moves. Even when I go to sleep, I only think in travelling and framing. It's too many days of Seven Festivals.

Faced with this situation, I have been forced to choose a new hobby and that is why I am addressing you. After meeting you all in A books and women singing, I would like to make mine, as you do, an admirable fondness for literature. I don't have, like Loreto, one of the protagonists of the film, a collection of Sad's full play on the in-room ballets; no, like Wal, the possibility to lie down and wake me up every day with Goethe; nor, of course, my aunt would recite poetry as Tonita when I was little.

I have books at home, yeah. Without reading much between them, I would have to add. I also have a special relationship with them, which is embodied in each of the underlined phrases and in the notes written with pencil on the edge of the pages. Is that enough to get into your literature amateurs' club?

You, the fans of literature, are the essence of A the books and the musical women of the filmmaker María Elorza. Through you, Elorza has produced an important documentary aimed at women and books, which sews music, images and anecdotes.

Claiming that it is not only academic literatures, we work on the hobby of books with humor and closeness. The cozy atmosphere was born from the beginning in the room thanks to the anecdote told by the director's mother, Tonina, and his sister, Ane, looking at the camera. Other parts of the film have also been moved, in most cases, by the eccentricities that you are interviewed. Consequently, the theme of literature approaches viewers without losing tenderness and in a very effective way, its complexity being recognized as known at all times.

It is precisely the confidence that the film places in the ingenuity of the spectator that is one of the elements that I find most remarkable. When we hear words from the director himself or from you, abstract images or visual metaphors that awaken our imagination often appear on the screen. Thus, María Elorza offers us images much more than just a reflection of what we hear, as it is impossible that the translation made from literary language to film language (which conversely) is literal. It seeks the suggestion and imagination, the silent participation of the viewer who will fill the film with their own experiences and reflections.

The fat work in image selection and assembly is also wonderful. Film archives, fragments of films, photographs and paintings, recorded by the camera… The documentary moves away from the purely familiar story, without losing the ability to surprise the viewer by chapters.

Cinema and literature are found in the complex ability to tell stories and in the potential to help build a new world. In the case of the documentary A the books and the women sing, by the Basque María Elorza, they also marry in an impeccable way. This is Elorza's first feature film, which competes in the New Directors section.

When the applause that has lasted a long time is over, the truth is that I had fully regained my fondness for film. So, as I continue to figure out how to combine film and literature, take these words back to them as a simple contribution from the former to the latter and, of course, as a celebration of both. For the moment, I will return to rows, applause and screens, to other films, to a new day of the Festival.

A greeting.