"... Jean Darrigol, is originally from Aldude, in Behe-Nafarroa. His family on his mother’s side is from the house Harritxiloa, a place that marked him as a child and is reflected in the house in the film. “In this family of eleven kids, many of my mother’s brothers emigrated to the West to work as sheepherders, just like many of their neighbors. Some came back; others, like Michel Muchico, stayed in California where he died in the early 70s,” Darrigol told EuskalKultura.com. “Years later, when I lived in California, I found his grave in Fresno in 1999. It was the first time that a member of the family visited it.
During his stay in the US Darrigol and Jerome Humbert, another promoter of the Project, met Tomas Arana, that has worked a great deal as a supporting actor in Hollywood. “I also remember a native American ranger, who helped us when we got lost in the Joshua Tree desert during a storm. She told us that the Basques were the first outsiders that she saw on her reservation. “There was something open, without barriers there…like in Ainara, the protagonist. I like to think that she could be the daughter of the protagonists in John Houston’s “The Misfits”. She is from another place, like the swallows, in her dreams she imagines her roots, more beautiful and alive. The confrontation of this dream, and the dream of the Diaspora, is reality, and one of the themes treated in the film.”...".
