Replica

In 1979, the medieval statue of the Virgin of Zikuñaga was stolen from its niche in the hermitage that bore its name, leaving behind a visible gap that soon became a symbol of a much deeper void: the emotional, the collective. That image, which had been part of the everyday landscape of Hernani, disappeared without a trace, and with it, a part of the town's imagination also vanished.

Two years earlier, in 1977, Juanmi Gutiérrez —the director's father— had filmed a short film about that same image. However, the film could never be screened: the Civil Guard seized the reel, condemning the project to oblivion. These two losses —the stolen sculpture and the vanished film— intertwine in the documentary as reflections of the same wound: interrupted memory, the difficulty of preserving what gives meaning to a community.

Decades later, the original hermitage was demolished, although its stones were preserved for forty years. In 2022, the temple was rebuilt about 200 meters from its original location, rekindling in the town the hope that the Virgin would return with it. But beyond the lost object, what 'Erreplika' proposes is a reflection on absence, symbolic reconstruction, and the role of cinema as a tool to recover what is no longer there.