Ane Gabarain
Icíar and Fernando are young. They are both going through the most traumatic experience of their short lives: the loss of a parent. But Fernando and Icíar can neither share the pain nor the strategies for dealing with it. They live in different times. Fernando in 1977 in Bilbao faces the kidnapping of his father by ETA. Icíar in 2011 in Navarra faces her mother's fulminating cancer.
A look at the impact of Spain’s Basque conflict on ordinary people on both sides, such as the widow of a man killed by the ETA who returns to her home village after the 2011 ceasefire between the separatist group and the Spanish government, and her former intimate friend, the mother of a jailed terrorist.
Somewhere in Spain, four ETA terrorists await a phone call before carrying out a mission, while the 2010 FIFA World Cup, where Spanish soccer team is one of the favorites to win, is being held in South Africa.
A trigger-happy Nationalist fears retribution from the son of a man he executed. To mollify the boy's anger, he takes a drastic step: he keeps constant watch over the fig tree the boy has planted at his father's gravesite. As the years pass, the man's lonely vigil makes him a tourist attraction, much to the chagrin of his former colleagues.
Someone takes a commuter train early in the morning to get to his work place. Extrange things begin to happen - Fellow commuters are just a little too friendly, and that music coming out the speakers is just too, too intense.
Ane is in her mid-forties and delighted when a stunning bouquet of flowers is delivered to her home. But the site manager has no idea who to thank – one thing is for sure; her jealous husband, Ander, is not the unknown cavalier. As these gallantries increase, always on a Thursday and always with an anonymous sender, Ane’s life takes on a new direction. The life of Lourdes is also sent into turmoil by beautiful bouquets of flowers: Since the death of her husband in a traffic accident, flowers have been deposited regularly at the scene. Lourdes’ mother-in-law, Tere, is determined to get to the bottom of the anonymous flowers. Jon Garaño and José Mari Goenaga’s feature film debut pays charming homage to three headstrong women and the power of flowers.
Axun, a 70 year old woman, is called from the hospital to take care of her daughter's ex-husband, who was seriously injured in a car accident. To her surprise, the woman who takes care of the other patient in the same hospital room turns out to be Maite, her best friend when teenagers. They have not seen each other for more than 50 years. The hospital visits will show that the close relationship they had when teenagers is still alive. Their relationship was very special fifty years ago but nowadays the same feelings flourish. Where is the thin line that separates friendship from desire?
Julián Torralba is a former movie stuntman in Almeria, Spain. He and several of his colleagues, who once made a living in American Westerns shot in Spain, now are reduced to doing stunt shows for minuscule audiences on the decaying set built for those old Westerns. Julián wrestles with dark memories of the death of his son, also a stuntman, and with estrangement from his daughter-in-law Laura and her son Carlos. Carlos, a young boy, becomes intrigued with his late father's life and runs away to join Julián and his band of has-beens. There Carlos is initiated into the rambunctious life of these hard-drinking faux cowboys. But when Laura, a powerful executive looking for a new site for a tourist resort, learns that Carlos has joined the hated Julián, she moves to destroy even this remnant of Julián's once-proud career. Julián and the cowboys decide to fight back the only way they know how.
Julia, a real estate agent, finds an enormous amount of money hidden in a dead man's apartment, a stroke of luck that will force her to face the wrath of the very peculiar inhabitants of the condominium, headed by an unscrupulous administrator.
