ABATA

In 1955, fascinated by the ingenious hunting of pigeons with wooden paddles and nets, Orson Welles directed the documentary “The Land of Basques”. Today, from a borda on the border between Navarre and France, Gerardo Damboriena, a veteran pigeon hunter, reveals in Basque the secrets of this tradition of more than 700 years, on the verge of extinction. We accompany Gerardo, leader of the last generation of dove hunters in the Etxalar Valley, as he reflects on his masters, his love for the ancestral hunt, and his feeling of belonging to a vanishing culture.