19/11/2025 - Set on Pheasant Island, Basque director Asier Urbieta’s feature film debut poses thought-provoking questions and shines a light on an underreported socio-geographical reality

Sambou Diaby, Ibrahima Kone and Jone Laspiur in Pheasant Island

Pheasant Island is a small islet on the Bidasoa River, on the border between south-western France and the Basque Country in northern Spain. It’s considered the smallest condominium in the world, administered by one country for six months and then by the other for the remaining six. To travel from France to Spain and vice versa, you just need to cross a bridge guarded constantly by the police. As a result, some migrants looking to enter France without papers throw themselves into the water hoping to reach the opposite bank safely. And this is exactly where we’re taken by Pheasant Island [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the debut feature film by Basque filmmaker Asier Urbieta, a director and screenwriter previously decorated for his short film Pim Pam Pum and known for the hit TV series Altasu. Having premiered in the 48th Gothenburg Film Festival last January, the film which is inspired by these perilous river crossings has just won the Audience Jury Award at the 30th Linea D’Ombra Festival in Salerno, where it competed in the Passaggi d’Europa section.    

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Spontaneous applause at the Salerno screening before the film had even ended was a clear sign of the audience’s emotional engagement. The story follows an interracial couple, Laida (Jone Laspiur, Goya for Best New Actress) and Sambou (Sambou Diaby, an award-winning stage and TV actor), who live happily near the titular island, divided by an invisible line that effectively marks the first border of the Old Continent encountered by people migrating from Africa to Europe. One day, while walking along the river, they spot two people struggling in the water, clearly in distress. Laida doesn’t think twice and dives in to help, but Sambou freezes, looking on. With great effort, Laida manages to bring one boy to safety, while the other – the friend who was crossing with him – is swept away by the current and disappears. Laida can’t understand why Sambou didn’t react; he can’t explain it either. Things will never be the same between them again.

How can a couple contend with a moral crisis of this kind? How can Laida look Sambou in the eye and not think about the fact her partner did nothing when faced with a fellow human in danger, and that, in all likelihood, he wouldn’t have moved a muscle to save her either, if it had come to that? This dilemma, reminiscent of Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, subtly runs through the entire film, which then broadens to encompass other themes (hospitality, solidarity and prejudice) and unfolds like a thriller, as Laida becomes increasingly emotionally involved and decides to conduct her own investigation to track down the boy she saved (played by Malian actor Ibrahima Kone) and to discover what became of the other young man lost to the waves.

Set in this strange borderland, where the police only stop you if you’re black and where the discovery of drowned bodies is part of a sad but regular routine, Pheasant Island is a film worth seeing, because it asks compelling questions (“What would you do in their place?”, the author seems to ask us), because it sheds light on a little-explored socio-geographical reality, and because it adds unexpected poetic touches to its fundamentally realist approach – featuring two papier-mâché giants in a central role – which opens hearts and broaden horizons. 

Pheasant Island is a production by Spanish firms Arcadia Motion Pictures, La Tentación Producciones and Galatea Films, in collaboration with La Fidèle Production (France). Latido Films are handling international sales.

(Translated from Italian)