A famous Spanish actor, Julio Arenas, disappears during the shooting of a film. Although his body is never found, the police concludes that he has suffered an accident at the edge of the sea. Many years later, this kind of mystery returns to the present day as a result of a television programme that aims to evoke the figure of the actor, offering for the first time images of the last scenes in which he participated, filmed by his close friend, the director Miguel Garay.
Born in Karrantza Harana (Bizkaia), Víctor Erice spent his childhood and early youth in Donostia. In 1961, in Madrid, he entered the Official Film School. He made his directorial debut with an episode of Los desafíos, which won the Silver Shell at the San Sebastian Festival in 1969. In 1973 he directed and co-wrote, with Angel Fernández Santos, El espíritu de la colmena. His second feature film, El Sur, was presented in the Official Selection of the Cannes Festival in 1983, receiving the Golden Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival of the same year. In 1990, together with the painter Antonio López, he made El sol del membrillo, winner of the Jury and International Critics' Prize at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. In 2002 he shot Alumbramiento, an episode of the feature film Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet. In 2005, together with filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, he produced the Erice-Kiarostami Exhibition. In the following years he worked on video installations: Fragor del mundo, silencio de la pintura (Centre Pompidou), on the painter Antonio López, and Piedra y Cielo (Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao), on the funerary stele of the sculptor Jorge Oteiza. Víctor Erice has received numerous public awards. Among others, the National Cinematography Award in 1993; Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 1995; Leopard of Honour dedicated to his entire career at the Locarno Festival in 2014. Erice has carried out extensive teaching work in the form of courses, seminars and workshops. Cerrar los ojos, his fourth feature film, was partly shot in Alcalá de Henares.
