Basque filmmaker Laida Lertxundi’s cinema is based, in her own words, on the premise of exercising through images the conflict between form and feeling. “Autofiction” is no exception. Borrowing its title from a literary genre, the film seeks to establish a tension between direct and fictional cinema: from the California lights to the New Zealand footage, from the civil rights march to the conversations among women where the issues explored go from motherhood to abortion, relationships, or anxiety caused by constant life changes. The result is a movie in which the spoken word emerges as a necessary political tool of social life. The filmmaker is a regular at Curtas Vila do Conde, and “Autofiction” allows for a new contact with the poetics of Lertxundi’s landscapes, with music also playing a pivotal role in this combination of formal rigor and sensitive pleasure, through which the author reflects on her own surroundings. (RM)