Isaba, a village straight out of the movies

Hundreds of people gathered in Roncal to celebrate the first Isaba Film Day, an event that took place on Sunday, June 29. This enthusiastic corner of the Roncal Valley actively preserves the oldest cinema in the Navarrese Pyrenees thanks to volunteers. The cinema dates back to the 1940s and has also been the setting for various film shoots.

In this first edition, the main event of the day was a tribute to Montxo Armendariz and Puy Oria. He was a film director and she was a producer, both from Navarre, and they were two of the key figures in the filming of Secrets of the Heart (1997) and Obaba (2005), which were partly shot in Isaba.

Navarrese physicist Pedro Miguel Echenique, an honorary citizen of the town of Isaba since 1998, took part in the celebration in his hometown and accompanied the honorees at the event, along with personalities such as writer Bernardo Atxaga, writer Asun Garitano, the director of the Basque Film Library, Joxean Fernández, and the director of the Navarre Film Library, Alberto Cañada, Ana Herrera, head of the Strategic Audiovisual Projects Section of the Government of Navarre, the mayor of Isaba, Carlos Anaut, and the councilor, Aitor Pérez.