72nd San Sebastian Festival - 20/28 September 2023
71SSIFF - 22/30 September 2023
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Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
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Agenda
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Districs and Villages
Films
Films
Francesco Nutti
Italy
109 min.
Due to her career as a saxophonist, a girl finds hersel obliged to leave her lover. The two of them meet again in Casablanca, where he is participating in an international sports competition.
Jaime Chávarri, Emiliano De Pedraza, Teo Escamilla, José Luis García Sánchez, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Carles Mira, Miguel Ángel Pacheco, Gonzalo Suárez
Spain
79 min.
Roman Chalbaud
Venezuela
120 min.
Tragedy and passion are the twin threads that more "El pez que fuma", an enormous brothel on the outskirts of Caracas. The throne of this kingdom of prostitution is occupied by "La Garza", who lives under the protection of Dimas, pimp and professional criminal. Dimas has followed Tobías in his job as a favorite, the latter in prison now due to information provided by the former. The change has been good for business and Dimas acquire a firmer grip on power until the arrival one day of a fairly young boy with an air of the naive outcast about him. The boy's name is Jairo. His arrival will shake up the dark world of "El pez que fuma".
Peter Kahame
German Democratic Republic
93 min.
Ete and Ali finish their service at the same time. But they feel little joy at being able to return home. Ali, a big felllow full of energy, knows that his village is a dead place, while Ete has discovered that his wife has taken up with another man. They both decide to go to Prague, but first they pay a visit to Ete's hometown, because Ali has tried to convince Ete to throw his wife's lover out of the house. As Ete is incapable of hurting anyone, of taking revenge, Ali takes justice into his own hands and transforms himself into Ete's hero. Ali's attempts to re-unite the separated couple fail. Mary, desperate for a true love, gives herself to Ali. Ete leaves. One day, the two men meet again and the story begins all over again with Ali's joveial proposition: Why not go together to the city, where the loveliest girls from the surroundings areas can be found? But this time Ete cannot share and adventure with this man who was once his great friend.
Paul Leduc
Mexico
108 min.
Frida traces on the screen, through the violent tremos of memories and images, the forever mangled interior and exterior pathways of the painter Frida Kahlo, and her encounter with the personalities of her time, which is also the dominant time of Mexican muralism.Frida not only faces, from the rickety platform of her wheelchair (polio, operations, and amputations) Rivera and Siqueiros with their colorful and pasisonate paraphernalia, but also one of the characters of the 20th century, the exiled Trotsky, king of controversy that sought refuge among the cactus and walls of centennial Coyoacan, southern district od Mexico City. So, Frida converts itself into the echo of laceration that was engraved yesterday on to cloth, and today is inscribed nto the subtle ductility of a film.
Not in competition
Elem Klimov
USSR
142 min.
The Second World War. Belarusian lands, occupied by the Nazis. The action takes place at a time when a hundred thousand Belarusians were burned alive by fascists executioners, and more than 620 towns and villages were wiped from the face of Earth. The film tells the story of one of these villages. The star, a boy called Flera, goes off with the guerillas, and from that moment he begins to live through the greatest of human miseries: he loses all his family and friends, he is humiliated and when all is over, this now old boy continues to be a Man. The film has a chilling and emotional impact, and at the end it is very moving because of its very human element.
Roman Chalbaud
Venezuela
98 min.
Carmona is a guard at a branch of the Banco Metropolitano in Caracas who is killed during a hold-up of the bank. Inmmediately the radio provides details of the event which reach the ears of one Doctor Herrera, well-connected at the highest levels of the judicial process. Herrera attempts to combat public indifference to this death and proposses a "Carmona" campaign at a national level with a view to sensitising public opinion.It is later discovered that the murdered policeman had formerly been a common criminal, but the campaign is in its advanced stages and the image of the police cannot be placed in jeopardy.
Haskell Wexler
USA
105 min.
Eddie Guerrero is a soldier, and one hundred percent American, proud of defending his country, but there comes a time in his life when he needs something else. So he goes off to Central America where his doubts will become more and more accentuated, and these eventually lead to him having to confront himself. The action takes place in Honduras, where the American Military are sent to train and help the contrarevolutionaries, a mercenary army paid by the CIA. This film is filmed in Nicaragua, a country wich really lacks the every-day comforts. The actor roberts Beltrán says that working conditions were difficult "there was a time" he says "when I would have left everything and gone back to my own country".
Milan Dor
Austria
93 min.
Malambo es a melancholic comedy featuring mainly the dreams and desires of some young people whose temperament can be called lunatic. Among them is Chris, honest by naive, who allows himself to be caught by the charms of Mischa. Nada, on the other hand is trying to be successful in life, but would never betray either himself, or his friends. These three friends get together with Rita, Anatol and Pero, and together they plan Chris's future artistic career. In this way they live out their own daydreams, leaving to one side the 'stress' of the outside world. If their sence of the Bohemian lets them down now and then, it must be said that these young people never stop believing in the life that they themselves are building upin their imagination.This films fits into the neorealist cinema tradition, and more particularly in that of Fellini. It may also be said to come from the Czech School of 1960. Among others, Miles Formen, Passer and Mentzél should be remembered.
Roman Chalbaud
Venezuela
128 min.
Pedro Zamora, an ex-guerrila-figther, returns to Caracas after ten years of absence, deliberately taking up lodging in the boarding house Hecce Homo (sic). His goal is to seek revenge against Diego Sánchez, former chief of the political police who murdered, with the help of his agents, several of Zamora's fellow figthers. Diego Sánchez is now the owner of the boarding house. The clandestine organisation no longer exists. Zamora's revenge is, after so long, of no political consequence. Yet nothing can dissuade him from his idea, neither Angela's love not the affection of the eccentric individuals who live in the boarding house. A final meeting between the two men seems inevitable.
Guillermo Orlando Rojas
Cuba
103 min.
The action starts in Havana (Cuba), in 1967. David arrives n this city to begin his pre-universitary studies. He makes friends with Miguel, who presumens to be a great success with the girls. At school the first romantic adventures emerge. Ofelia, the class delegate, feels attractedd towards David. He, nevertheless, is attracted by Olga who returns his feelings. Confronted by this love affair, David's friends feel an anger which brings the worst out of them. An so they try to convince David to make the girl fall in love with him and then abandon her. David gives away under the pressure of his friends without taking into account his own feelings.
Péter Gárdos
Hungary
93 min.
The film's central characters are an old man, an ex-illusionist and a young acrobat who sffers from a marked limp caused by an accident. Sajek, the latter, decides to finish the mediocrity of his life and becomes obsessed with the idea that the only way out is a world-beater of an act. The past master of this act is the old man, Lipot Binder who, in days gone by, used to travel around different countries with his illusionist act "The Man Imprisoned in Ice". The old man, himself, is, in fact, imprisoned, a prisoner of solitude in his hotel room, a prisoner of the past, a prisoner of himself. It is then when Sajek knocks on the old man's door and enters his life. Sajek doesn't draw back from using whatever means necessary to get what he wants. But Lipot won't give up his trick so easily; it is a family heirloom. And so there develops between the two men a professional conflict which gradually submerges them in a whirpool of love and hate, lonliness and confrontation, vanity, arrogance, power struggle and weakness, defeat and victory. The old man tells Sajek the trick and at the same time doesn't. The young man is triumphant and at the same time isn't. In the end, Sajek manages to get the act and, with it, success. However, something essential is left behind: a total and deep human relation. Sajek has half the kingdom, the victory. The other half, the human, the love-hate relationship, is part of the past. Sajek continues to lack half of himself.
Edgard Telles Ribeiro
Brazil
12 min.
Short film
An interview with a Brazilian, born in the Amazon jungle, who, after emigrating to the USA, is sent to the war in Vietnam, from 1970 to 1972. The testimony of this man is basked up by photos and other graphic material about the war.
Désiré Ecaré
Ivory Coast
105 min.
This film is made up of two parts intersected and punctuated by scenes of group dances. There are two movements in this first part: the tender links between sister-in-law and the hesitations of the husband/brother. Then the relationships develop between the yong man and the girl. The second part is a whole whithout any variations: the will of the woman to lead her own life and the family life... the big plans and the ordinary worries. The two parts open up on a revolution made of femenine demonstration, social fractures and the restructuring of responsabilities in ... an African country.
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