“Take care and be a professional boxer, Iván.” Goodbye kisses and hugs: The Bilbaos opens where Rancho, documentary filmmaker Pedro Speroni’s first film, left off. Iván Bilbao walks his high security prison’s corridor for the last time. We had known him to be charismatic and disciplined, intended perhaps for a good career. A year later here he is, training before his wife Yamila’s gaze, anonymous in small neighbourhood premises in Chascomùs. It is to this town, where he was born, that Iván has returned to set up a small business. Stifled by the memories of a painful childhood and a tense relationship with his parents, his only escape is the paternal tenderness he shows for Yamila’s daughter, the desire that she bear his child and the strength of his fists that five years of imprisonment have not subdued. AR
French Premiere
