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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Zabaltegi
Films
Films
André Delvaux
Belgium
94 min.
Mid August. Heat. Brussels almost empty. In the National Opera, Mozart's Don Giovanni is being rehearsed. The character comes in the form of José Van Dam. Around him are the rest of the singers - being directed by Cambreling, and they are speaking different languages. It is Babel. There are various comedy characters swarming around this opera - they act as a mirror of Mozart's imagined beings: François, who dreams of directing his own Don Juan north of Anvers; Sandra, jealous and in love, who spends her whole life waiting for Fraçois; Ben, fascinated by the appearance od Stéphane, the flirt. The four characters unite and separate at the same time as those of the opera Don Giovanni, at last meeting up again on the night the new version of the celebrated opera has its first night. As Delvaux himself has said, this film tries to mirror the Belgian identity.
Not in competition
Rainer Simon
German Democratic Republic
98 min.
Based on Leonhard Frank's novel Karl and Anna, the film deals with an unusual love-story set during World War I involving three people. Karl and Richard, welded together during that crazy loneliness of war captivity, tell each other everything about their lives. Richard's longing reveries of his wife Anna stir deep feelings in Karl, feelings which grow stronger and stronger for this woman who was a complete stranger to him and at the same time so deeply familiar. He manages to escape from captivity. Then suddenly he stands in front of Anna, pretending to be her husband, who is said to have been killed in action. Anna, being madly uncertain about Karl's detailed knowledge about her life, has a strong desire for love and happiness. So she pushes away her knowledge that Karl is not Richard and in the end her love for Karl becomes so strong and experience which she has never felt with Richard. Now she is expecting a baby. However, a letter arrives announcing Richard's return. A get-together and a decision cannot be avoided. The two men, badly treated by the war, face each other fighting for Anna's love.
Not in competition
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.
Luis Puenzo
Argentina
112 min.
Alicia is a History teacher and the mother of an adopted child. She has alway accepted the word of the authorities both in her work and her private life. Until one day the front, that sorrounds the Government and her environment, begins to crack and collapse around her. Amonst the cracks of that great lie, Alicia begins to suspect that her adopted daugther could be the child of a missing person. She starts on a very painful journey to reach the truth,a journey in which she could lose everything. Alicia's adventure forms part of the tragedy of all Argentina. In the same situation as her daugther, that of the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo; and the girlfriends who has been tortured and returns from exile; the students who can't study, and now don't want to, to believe only that which is permitted; that of her father-in-law, now an old man, who has lost everything but his dignity; the mothers, who surrounded by the police, shout to claim their children; and even her husband, who is involved in the corruption and which will end threatening him, are nothing more than different sides of the same reality."The majority of the Argentinians -according to the authors of the film- believe that we weren't victims or hangmen. Now we know that we have been both". The film tries, summing up, to reveal the ends which justified the hell in which Argentina lives from march 1976 to December 1983.
Not in competition
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.
Luc Besson
France
114 min.
Subway has the Paris Metro as its setting. In this steamy atmosphere an unusual story of love emerges between Elena and Fred. She is an attractive young woman married to a man who is too well-heeled to venture into a working class atmosphere. Fred is a nice guy and fairly innocent, scraping a living together in the Paris metro. The former's boredom and the latter's dreamy impatience prepare the field for a mutual love. The fact that Fred raids the safe in Elena's house and that he smashes up her husband's car doesn't stop them. Their fascination for each other grows even more to the point where she discovers that underground world is so different from the bourgeois idleness and she gets to know individuals such as "Roller", a villain on roller skates who shatches handbags; "The Flower-seller", who deals in everything; "Big Bill", a mountain of muscle who trains secretly... and musicians who carry their instruments around the never-ending subway corridors with them and about whom Fred thinks a as members of a future musical group.
Not in competition
Woody Allen
USA
82 min.
Cecilia, a young American girl, uses the cinema to help her escape from the monotony of everyday life and from the lack of money. She goes to see the same film over and over again to see the hero of the film with whom she has fallen in love. One day he emerges from the film screen to discover along with Cecilia the love of their lives. Our star finds out that real life is not as romantic and more sordid than her make-believe world. She also discovers, but perhaps too late, that the reality rarely reaches the high standard which we attain in our dreams. It is really a beautiful parable on the dream maker, and the enchantment of their imaginary as opposed to the pain of living. Like most of us she finds refuge in the cinema to escape from the parts of her life which she does not like. It is also a story about the power of an actor. That once he has created the character of his role, the artist continues to be himself, or becomes partly the character in the film?
Not in competition
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.
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Monday to Thursday: 09:00h - 15:00h
Friday: 10:00h - 14:00h
Monday to Thursday: 09:00h - 15:00h
Friday: 10:00h - 14:00h
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