By Mónica Delgado

O que arde revisits a thematic concern that appears in a big part of the so called “new Galician cinema”: resistance to the distortion of natural or rural life, the fear of losing rites and traditions, and the visions from characters who inhabit these liminal spaces confronted with the modernity of the city and its threat. In this first presentation of Galician cinema in Un Certain Regard (Laxe has already been in Cannes twice with Mimosas and Todos vós sodes capitáns), what was first shown –with a metaphoric intro is precisely the concretion of this disquisition: a centenary tree which refuses to be chopped down.