Ortzimugan

Ortzimugan tells the true story of Fermín Aldabaldetreku Arruti, known artistically as Pirmin Treku — a Basque child who fled the Spanish Civil War with his sisters and found refuge in England. What began as a temporary exile became a lifetime of distance, memory and reinvention. The film weaves together the siblings’ memories of their displacement with a defining moment in Fermín’s adult life: his final performance as a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet in London.
After the bombing of Gernika in 1937, the Basque Government organised one of the largest evacuations of children in history. More than four thousand minors boarded the SS Habana bound for Southampton. Among them were Fermín, Eli and Lore, who arrived at the North Stoneham refugee camp and faced the task of rebuilding a childhood far from everything they knew.
In that uprooted world, Eli assumes the role of protector; Lore holds on to small fragments of normality; and Fermín finds in dance both a refuge and a language — a way to express what words cannot carry and to keep alive his connection to the land he has lost. As Pirmin Treku dances for the last time at the Royal Opera House, the stage lights bring back the echoes of a boy who had once lost everything, and who learned to reshape grief into beauty.
Ortzimugan is a film about exile and resilience, about the art that survives displacement, and about the memory that never fully leaves. At its heart is the story of a child who, after losing his homeland, claimed dance as his final home.