SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain, 21 September 2003 — Politics and sport are never far from the surface in Spain, and the 51st San Sebastian International Film Festival is no exception.

Of some 160 films at the event which opened Thursday and will run to Sept. 27, none is likely to court more controversy than Julio Medem’s 115-minute offering Basque Pelota, the Skin against the Stone.

The film is due to be shown at the Festival today. But already storm clouds are brewing about the work which, aside from a clip of fronton — a form of pelota — owes rather more to intense political debate, Basque-style, than sport.

After a private showing of the work, Professor Gotzone Mora and journalist and writer Inaki Ezquerra, both of Basque origin and interviewed in the movie, accused Medem of “manipulating Spanish history” and of “exalting nationalism”.

They believe the film glorifies violence and is sympathetic toward the armed Basque separatist group ETA, which has killed more than 800 people in a three-decade struggle for independence in the Basque region of northern Spain.

Medem retorted by saying he would “not respond to the criticisms until the showing” of the film.

He left it to viewers to “work out my true intentions”.

Those intentions, he maintains, are bringing to the screen a film which is an “invitation to dialogue” based on a rejection of violence.

Festival organizers have allowed the film into the line-up saying that they do not see the work as an “vindication for terrorism”.

Publicity material for the media attending the event says that Medem’s film “analyzes the situation in the Basque country in honest and dispassionate fashion, posing questions about the past, present and future of Euskal Herria (Basque for the Basque country.)

“In presenting a large number of interviews with Basques, much archive material and a superb soundtrack (Medem) offers a documentary which will leave nobody indifferent,” says the PR spiel.

Mora and Ezquerra remain far from convinced.

They have branded the film as “biased and offensive for those under threat (of ETA violence). It furthermore portrays the police as torturers.”

Mora and Ezquerra added they were horrified by the film’s release for showing at the festival. “It is a biased film which presents the Spanish state as the enemy of the Basque country, the Spanish Civil War (of 1936-39) as a war between Spain and the Basque country and the (Spanish) constitution and monarchy as being imposed upon the Basque people.