Daniel Suberviola

The Spanish journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales (1897-1944) was always there where the news broke out: in the fratricidal Spain of 1936, in Bolshevik Russia, in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, in occupied Paris or in the bombed London of World War II; because his job was to walk, see and tell stories, and thus fight against tyrants, at a time when it was necessary to take sides in order not to be left alone; but he, a man of integrity to the bitter end, never did so.

The Free Zone in Western Sahara is a deserted, inhuman land where huge areas of the desert are riddled with anti-personnel mines. The protagonist of the film works in a brigade neutralising explosives and personally comments on this almost Sisyphean task.

In the documentary “GTBxGTB,” the Galician writer Gonzalo Torrente Ballester speaks about his life, his work, and his intellectual, social, and political concerns. The narrative thread is shaped by the voices of the author of “Los gozos y las sombras,” along with those of the journalists who interviewed him on television over the years. “GTBxGTB” traces the childhood, youth, and maturity of the Galician writer in a biographical account interwoven with his reflections as a novelist, his beliefs about literary creation, his political attitudes, and his thoughts on concepts such as myth, power, History, Galicia, women, and death. Gonzalo Torrente Ballester answers questions from journalists Joaquín Soler Serrano, Pablo Lizcano, Fernando Sánchez Dragó, Terenci Moix, José Luis Balbín, Begoña Aranguren, and Antón López Vallejo. The documentary also recovers audio excerpts from some of his hundreds of lectures and from his work diaries, recorded on reel-to-reel tape recorders.