01/08/2025 - Nagore Aranburu stars in a dark, dirty and dangerous thriller that delves into the city’s sewers, which will screen out of competition at the Basque film festival

The miniseries Sky Mouths (Zeru Ahoak) (Bocas de cielo), directed and created by Koldo Almandoz (The Deer [+see also:
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interview: Koldo Almandoz
film profile], selected in the New Directors section at San Sebastián 2018), is a sequel to his earlier work Hondar Ahoak (Sand Mouths) (2020). Shot in Basque last year, it will premiere in the official out-of-competition section of the 73rd San Sebastian Film Festival, taking place from 19 to 27 September.

The cast of this fiction – described by its creators as “dark, dirty and dangerous” – includes Nagore Aranburu (who also presented the miniseries Querer [+see also:
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interview: Alauda Ruiz de Azúa
series profile] in San Sebastian last year and will appear in four films at this year's festival, including Los domingos, Maspalomas and Karmele), Josean Bengoetxea (recently seen in Pheasant Island [+see also:
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The four-episode series, each 40 minutes long, with a script by Harkaitz Cano and Almandoz, follows the story of Nerea García (played by Nagore Aranburu, reprising the role she played in Hondar Ahoak), who is going through a difficult period. Four years have passed since she was expelled from the Ertzaintza, and she lives in isolation, confined to her home in Bilbao. The discovery of a woman's body, murdered in what appears to be a ritual, leads her former boss to call on her for help with the investigation. What Nerea does not realise is that ghosts from both past and present will force her into the city's sewers, where nothing and no one is as they seem.

Its director explains: "Sky Mouths has its own personality and aesthetic. As a lover of the noir genre, I’ve always understood that audiences want, on the one hand, the conventions of the genre to be respected, but on the other, to be offered something new and original that sets it apart from other works. With this series, I wanted to achieve exactly that. He goes on to say, “the plot grabs you from the very first minute and doesn't let go until the end. The characters, and the relationships that unfold between them, take centre stage. The protagonists will face dilemmas, be forced to make choices and live with the consequences. All of this is set against a backdrop and landscape far removed from the postcard image of the Basque Country. As the episodes progress and the layers are peeled back, the story becomes dirtier and morally more ambiguous.”

Koldo Almandoz won the Irizar Basque Film Award at this same festival with his second feature, The Deer, while his debut film Ghost Ship [+see also:
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film profile] (2016) screened in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section after the Deep Focus section of the IFFR. He has also directed the series Intimacy [+see also:
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Sky Mouths is produced by Marian Fernández Pascal for the production companies Txintxua Films and Garabi Films, with the participation of EITB and RTVE.

(Translated from Spanish)