The Best Path Is The One That Leads To Nowhere – Alegria
Spanish filmmaker Oskar Alegria believes that the best path to follow in life is the one that leads nowhere.
“I don’t like to know where I am going with any project. If I know all the steps to a project, I won’t do it. I believe mystery is important. When I can’t tell where a project is going, then the world is a mystery and a challenge.” (A challenge that he works to surmount).
This is a scary thought for most people, many of whom would prefer to have a backup plan.
However, Alegria is not saying one should not have a plan. What he is saying is that it is okay not to have everything all thought out. It is okay to have a plan, but be open to abandoning it when something better presents itself. That is how all the great works, innovations and inventions came to be; by accident and by focusing on the process, or the journey, not the destination.
This philosophy is reflected in his works and career, from his early days as a photographer to his transition to a filmmaker, with three independent, deeply personal films to his name today.
As a photographer, he undertook a world cities tour project, which is thematic in nature, where he looked for green on grey in Germany. In Germany, the colour green represents hope. One can imagine what pops of green amid a drab background looks like. And in Japan, popularly known as the ‘Land of the Racing Sun’, he captured shadows.
These images didn’t make any sense, until he came to pair four of the images he made in each city – and saw an invisible thread, a connection, and a natural flow of movement from one image to the other.
“I didn’t know I was already thinking in motions, until I accidentally pressed a button in my camera, the camera my mother gave me, and realized it was filming. I thought that the camera was expressing itself, so I won’t touch it anymore. Let’s make a film.”
Similarly, there is a connectedness and organic progression in his films, which are solely documentaries. From the first film ‘Emak Bakia’ (2012) – inspired by Man Ray’s work of the same title, to ‘Zumiriki’ (2019) – where he spent four months alone in a forest with only the animals and his books as companions, to the latest titled ‘Zinzindurrunkarratz’ (2023).
“The second film would not exist without the first. The first is about a hunter who goes to catch prey. The second one is of a fisherman who does the opposite of what the hunter did, which is to wait for the prey to come to him.
‘Zinzindurrunkarratz’, my latest work, is a balance between the last two – a person walks to catch a prey but also stays still at some point, to wait for the prey to come to him.”
Alegria’s ‘Zinzindurrunkarratz’ screened at the 2025 Zuma International Film Festival, where he also featured in a co-production-themed panel session.
As a jury member of the festival, Alegria is visiting Nigeria for the first time, but is surprised to observe that Nigerians share a similar sense of humour with Spaniards. He laughs at their joke and they at his. He believes that such shared humour and the unique cultures of both countries are worth exploring in films.
“A co-production between Nigeria and Spain, I believe, will be a nice blend of the Nigerian culture and the Spanish perspective, and of the Spanish culture and the Nigerian perspective of it.”
So, what does a contemporary inversive/revolutionary filmmaker look like?
It is someone who goes against the grain. Someone who believes in ‘darkness, camera, stillness’. One who tells stories from varied perspectives. Someone who is not afraid of ‘going nowhere’ and sees the freedom in the supposed madness of ‘purposelessness’.
“My work is very free. I try to be free with every project I undertake. And each time, it is getting more difficult. But the outcome is greater. That is because I push myself beyond what I have done before. My works are like steps. One step leads you to the other. All the steps together make a path.”
It is a path that may seem lonely or isolated, but is revolutionary and has its own audience. One only needs to start the project or journey.
“I think madness is revolutionary in our times today. Why don’t we do films without lights? Why don’t we do films without sound? A lot of people said I was mad. But some said, “This is not something that we do not completely understand, but we have to do this, because we feel you. It is like you are offering a poem to the people, and the people want to add their verse to the poem”.
“You will find a lot of partners, people who will come to help you, because they see that what you are doing is not commercially lucrative, because you believe in a mystery, and they need that. It is like you are offering a poem to the people, and the people want to add their own verse to the poem.”
Since his family kick-started his creative journey, they are proud that his work is deploying the family archive and addressing issues that matter.
“I make films because I want to save a world (of my childhood and country) that is dying, and to fix it forever. My three films had this mission.
“I think we undermine a lot of things. We think them common, unimportant or nonsensical. But when you put them – like the Column of Earth project set in a landscape that now makes a sundial, they make more sense. My family is proud of the work that I do,” concluded Alegria.
