Since the first edition was organized in 2006 with the Gazte Asanblada of the Old Part of Donostiarra, "the festivals sought to be a speaker of the diversity of resistances and dissent, combining film, enjoyment, criticity and claim". Although it was not organized for three years, since it was recovered in 2010 in the gaztetxe Kortxoenea of Gros, every year an alternative offer has been given to make projections in spaces and self-managed projects of the city.

The 2020 Alternative Film Festival comes conditioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like every year, they have created a list of documentaries and films on social issues and conflicts. "Be old or new, all of them very topical and give you what to think. This is one of the objectives of the festival always, to generate a critical reflection on the situations we live in", point out in the note sent to the press.

This year’s edition has been based on the ARGIA multimedia channel and have selected a number of films for this purpose. The closing event will be a talk with Fermin Muguruza by ARGIA journalist Lander Arbelaitz. In the documentary the trajectory of Iñigo Muguruza, his brother, will be premiered through 10 films selected in the program.

Then this year’s programme and the reason for the choice of each film:

Friday, 18 September: Residues; chronicle of anti-clockwise expropriation

We are not figurative in our city! Woody Allen will open the 68th edition of the Rifkin’s Festival that was recorded last summer in San Sebastian. San Sebastian film festival. Although some would like to forget and hide, the stay and project of the American filmmaker was a great stir. The protests, convened by various agents of the city, led the public authorities of San Sebastian to denounce the rapid and violent tourist process of the city, warning that the recording of the film will involve in the short and medium term a tourist growth that could cause damage to the living conditions of the neighbors. That's the goal of the film, to promote the city internationally, nothing else. The commodification of the urban mark and of culture meets particular commercial objectives, and anyone who comes to achieve that objective is placed on the red carpet, although the living conditions of the inhabitants of the city must be passed over.

The Alternative Film Festival invites you to join the denunciation and reflect on the consequences of excessive tourism during the inauguration. The documentary Zabor has been selected for the first day by the youth assembly Danda de Zarautz, which analyzes the effects of tourism in this coastal locality of Gipuzkoa.

To see it online click here.

Saturday, 19 September: Windows to look inside

Because we want them at home and alive! Enough! Martutene prison is approaching and the death of the Basque political prisoner Igor González Sola is approaching. The Alternative Film Festival wants to remind imprisoned prisoners and colleagues killed by prison because we want to live in a people free and free from prisons, at home and because we want to live.

It is a work carried out by Josu Martínez, Eneko Olasagasti, Mireia Gabilondo, Enara Goikoetxea and Txaber Larreategi. Portraits of five Basque prisoners by five filmmakers. Five stories told in small print. Five windows to look inside.

To see it online click here.

Sunday, 20 September: The Doctrine of Shock

COVID-19 is an essential piece of work to understand the management that the political powers are doing of the pandemic, based on Naomi Klein’s book. Capitalism takes advantage of the fear extended in many fields of catastrophe to maintain the sociopolitical hegemony, as seen very well in this documentary.

To see it online click here.

Monday, 21 September: Lucio

There have been and still are many anarchists in the world. Many have been involved in the theft or smuggling of the cause. Very few have been the performances in the strategy debate with Ché or those that have helped the leader of the Black Panthers, Eldridge Cleaver. Only one, together with all this, put the most powerful bank on the planet in trouble by massively falsifying traveller checks. And all of this, without missing a single day to his construction task. Lucio Urtubia, anarchist masonry of Cascante (Navarra) who left us on 18 July.

To see it online click here.

Tuesday, 22 September: 120 hours - Torture against Euskal Herria

In memory of Mikel Zabraise, you owe the truth! On 26 November, 35 years have passed since the arrest, torture and murder of Mikel Zabascene Garate, a neighbour of Altza and a worker of the San Sebastian Tram Company, by the Civil Guard. The documentary “Where is Mikel?” will be screened at the official festival. And we also want to bring your memory to our program. Also the denunciation of torture. José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastian Film Festival, recently stated that: “In the Basque Country we all know that in the late 70’s and early 80’s it was tortured.” But Mikel was killed in 1985; Gurutze Iantzi and Xabier Galparsoro “Anuk” in 1993; and the photos of Unai Romano remain very present.

Torture is a cruel and systematic practice that the Spanish State has used against Basque citizenship. To this end, the State uses machinery of complicity that hides torture, giving torturers total impunity. Through several interviews, we will see what mechanisms make torture possible: what is incommunication, what objectives are torture, the role of forensic doctors, lawyers and judges; impunity, what measures must be taken to prevent torture in police stations.

To see it online click here.

Wednesday, 23 September: I'm wild

The wave of protests that led to the racist murder of George Floyd on an international level has put colonialist symbols in the spotlight. White men related to imperialism or slavery, sold as discoverers, navigators, city creators, adventurers, businessmen or heroes of Eurocentric history. For this reason, in this edition we will pay tribute to the combatants and the struggles against colonialism of yesterday and today.

In the mid-19th century, the 14th President of the United States, Franklin Pierce, tried to buy the lands of the Duwamish tribe and proposed that they go to a reserve. The documentary focuses on the response that the Indian leader Seattle has given to the President of the United States.

To see it online click here.

Thursday, 24 September: The Gaztetxe de Vitoria, who has not tried it, does not know what this is!

In recent months, media outlets in the Spanish State have conducted a media bombing of the occupation, and Hego Euskal Herria is not safe from its effects. For this reason, in this year’s edition we will once again defend the practice of occupation and demand its necessity.

On April 28, 1988, the door of the future Gaztetxe of Vitoria-Gasteiz was beaten by the Municipal Police. More than a quarter of a century has passed and this documentary gathers the history of those years.

To see it online click here.

Friday, 25 September: Here begins the war

Hell alive! No racism! Every year, 11 tonnes of armaments produced in the Basque Country leave our ports. And although international conflicts and the refugee crisis are united, while war is being promoted, among other things, the migrated and refugee people who are the result of those wars are being turned away. Moreover, they are often criminalized and persecuted, as seen last week in the Donostia district of El Inferno. In a joint police operation between the Municipal Police, the Ertzaintza and the Spanish National Police, 62 people were identified, of which 13 were handed over to the National Police for allegedly infringing the law on aliens.

This documentary, driven by the commission “The War Begins Here” by the ONGI collective Etorri Errefuxiatuak – Bizkaia, shows the production of weapons from the Basque Country and, above all, denounces the trafficking of arms from the Port of Bilbao.

To see it online click here.

26 September, Saturday: Iñigo Muguruza closing: We See Ourselves in Paradise Movies

Talk about the trajectory and film of the Moscow musician. The musician Lander Arbelaitz and his brother Fermin Muguruza will be in charge of reviewing his life trajectory along with the filmography he has chosen for it. Paris-Texas, Irun-Moscow, or something like that ...

On the same day, we'll open the video of the talk at ARGIA.