Maixabel brings a painful chapter of recent Spanish history to the screen: the story of a widow who agreed to sit across a table from one of the men responsible for her husband's death, more than a decade after it happened.
What is Maixabel about?
The film begins with the events of 2000, when Juan Maria Jauregi was killed by ETA, leaving Maixabel Lasa without the partner she had been with since she was sixteen. Eleven years pass. Then a message arrives from the Nanclares de la Oca prison in Araba: one of those serving a sentence for the attack has cut his ties with the organisation and is asking to speak with her face to face. Maixabel weighs the request against her grief and against the expectations of the people around her, and she eventually chooses to go. What follows is a sequence of meetings in which two people who share nothing but a wound try to speak honestly about it. Her own explanation for saying yes is disarmingly simple: she believes everyone deserves a second chance.
About the cast
Blanca Portillo and Luis Tosar head the cast, with Urko Olazábal, María Cerezuela, Tamara Canosa, María Jesús Hoyos, Arantxa Aranguren and Bruno Sevilla in supporting roles. The acting is built on restraint. Long conversational scenes ask the performers to hold conflicting feelings at once, and a pause or a glance often carries more than a line of dialogue.
Context & significance
Director Icíar Bollaín, working from real events in the Basque Country, keeps the drama close to the ground. Rather than reconstructing the violence of the ETA years in detail, the film concentrates on the aftermath: on what a victim's family lives with, and on what it might mean for a former member of the group to face that family directly. Released in 2021 and produced in Spain, Maixabel runs 115 minutes and sits firmly in the drama category, though its real-life foundation gives it the texture of a documentary at times. Viewers unfamiliar with the Basque conflict get enough context to follow the stakes; the focus stays on two individuals rather than on politics.
Watching Maixabel on Ktime
Maixabel streams on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so you can either hear the film in Farsi or follow the original Spanish-language performances with subtitles. Watching requires a K-Time account login, while this page itself is free to read. The player, menus and search are designed in Farsi for Persian-speaking viewers living outside Iran.