In 1975 he was arrested for protesting the killing of a Basque activist and faced trial on charges of conspiracy; this coincided with Franco's death and a subsequent amnesty was declared.

[8] Ikusmena presents a ten-year-old girl winning a prize in a school painting competition in a narrative disruptive by flashbacks that reveal how her artistic creativity had already been stifled by censorship and social pressures.

[7] Armendáriz turned towards the more socially relevant documentary genre and made the eleventh episode in the Ikuska series: La ribera de Navarra (The Riberbanks of Navarre) ( 1981).

[7] Tasio (1984), Armendáriz's debut as full-length feature film director, traces the generational history of the title character, a charcoal burner in the Urbasa mountains, whose threaten way of life is detail in a series of elliptical sequences in a visual style that approximates ethnographic cinema.

The film, starring Juan Diego Botto and Jordi Mollà, follows two close friends filling their summer vacation with sex, drugs and rock.

[6] Two years later he directed his next film Silencio Roto (Broken Silence), a story about Maquis, the guerilla fighters that confronted the Francoist forces in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

[6] The director's subsequent project was a return to his origins as a documentarist, making Escenario Movil (2004) which follows the itinerant life of a musician through different musical venues.

[6] Armendáriz most recent film No tengas miedo (Don't be afraid) (2011) stars Michelle Jenner as Silvia a young woman confronting her past as an abused child.