Filmax has picked up international sales on “ Karmele ,” directed by Basque Asier Altuna and produced by Marian Fernández Pascal at San Sebastián-based Txintxua Films and Esnatzeko Ordua Films .

Inspired by Kirmen Uribe’s fact based novel “La hora de despertarnos juntos,” the Basque drama retraces the life of a real-life figure, Karmele Urresti, a nurse forced into exile during the Spanish Civil War. Played by Jone Laspiur , she falls in love with trumpet player Txomin Letamendi ( Eneko Sagardoy ) in France, and together they build a family across Paris, Caracas and Bilbao while navigating the fracture between love, loyalty and political conviction.

Altuna was struck by the density of events packed into the couple’s biography: expulsion, clandestine work against the dicta

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