The Sky Turns

The last child to be born in the tiny village of La Aldea in Spain’s rugged north, Mercedes Álvarez and her parents left the area when she was three years old. Decades later she decides to return home, to discover the world her family like so many others left behind. The town now has been reduced to just a few elderly people, in whose lined faces the history of the region seems to be etched. Some plans to revitalize the region are proposed; the castle could become a hotel, and fossils of ancient creatures and ruins of bygone civilizations could attract tourists, yet whatever remedy is proposed would surely be too late for those who live there now. Álvarez’s most telling encounter is with Pello Azketa, a painter gradually going blind, who tries to capture the disappearance of a way of life as his own eyesight slowly deserts him.