“Hauspoa & Tunela” (The Bellows Tunnel) has won the “Best Short Film Award” at the “American Motion Pictures Festival” in Atlanta, Georgia, USA this week. The film is co-directed by accordionist and composer Gorka Hermosa and Iñaki Pinedo and is a 30 minute documentary that explores the origins of the Basque trikitixa (small diatonic button accordion), tracing it to an Italian worker who came to build the Madrid–Paris railway tunnels in 1859.

“This award joins the documentary’s 1st Prize win at the Arjuntala Film Festival (India) and 2nd Prize at the R.C. Festival in Buenos Aires. It has also been selected for the official lineup of 28 international film festivals around the world (Colombia, Brazil, Nigeria, Chile, Cincinnati, Italy, Macedonia, Greece, Germany, and Spain), which is no small feat, given that hundreds of entries are usually submitted, yet only about a dozen are chosen for each official selection.”

This week Gorka presented the documentary with a mini-concert and screening in Biniés, Huesca, Aragon, Spain, at the 5th Accordionists Meeting.

The central story begins in 1859, when Italian workers came to the Basque Country to work on the Madrid–Paris railway, including construction of its tunnels.

“According to the historical story explored by the documentary, one of those workers, Juan Bautista Busca, played a small accordion. The instrument arrived in Zumarraga, where its sound encountered an existing local tradition involving the pandero (Basque tambourine). That meeting of musical traditions ultimately contributed to the development of what became known as trikitixa.”

“So the “tunnel” in the title isn’t simply about a railway tunnel. It represents the unlikely route by which an Italian musical instrument entered Basque culture and, over generations, became associated strongly with Basque identity.”

“The film premiered in Zumarraga in June 2025 as part of a concert presentation. It subsequently had a formal screening in San Sebastián, and a Bilbao premiere took place at the Bidebarrieta Cultural Centre in January 2026, with the directors and musicians taking part in a discussion afterward.”