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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Hunger, Humour and Fantasy
Films
Films
IAN McNAUGHTON
United Kingdom
89 min.
This is a collection of some of the most popular sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus, including the introductory How Not To Be Seen, and the skits Dead Parrot, The World's Deadliest Joke, Upper-Class Twit of the Year and Lumberjack Song.
NANNI LOY
Italy
105 min.
The ringleader of a Roman gang of petty thieves, Peppe is persuaded by one of his cronies to come in on a big job: to hold up the van with the Totocalcio (the Italian football pools) takings in Milan. Although their Milanese sidekick is arrested, they decide to go ahead with their plan, and, despite the whole thing being a bit of a mess, they manage to get away with an impressive sum of money. Returning to Rome, they put the case into a left-luggage locker at the station, but one of crooks takes it out to have a blowout and lands in hospital. The others get the money back, but since none of them wants the responsibility of keeping it, they abandon the suitcase in a garden and call the police.
ROBERTO ROSSELLINI
Italy
90 min.
Salvatore has spent twenty years behind bars for having killed his wife's lover. Getting out of prison he discovers the man he murdered wasn't the only one by any means and that his relatives had always taken advantage of his gullibility. Deciding he was better off in jail, he does everything he can to get back into the place where people still have honest feelings and respect for their fellow men.
RENATO CASTELLANI
Italia
95 min.
Antonio has to work to keep his mother, his five sisters, and to save enough to marry the spirited Carmela, daughter of the local firework-maker. The priest takes him on as a verger and he makes up his wage by pasting communist propaganda on the walls of Naples. However, he finds himself out of a job when the priest learns how he earns his extra money. As if things weren't bad enough, the bride-to-be's father decides he's against the marriage. Carmela runs away from home and convinces Antonio to stand up to her family. Rejected yet again, Antonio decides to go ahead and marry Carmela with or without her father's consent.
MARIO MONICELLI, STENO - STEFANO VANZINA
Italy
100 min.
While handing out food parcels for an American charitable organisation, Ferdinando Esposito is recognised by a tourist he had swindled only a few days earlier by selling him a coin he had sworn was an antique. After a long chase, the culprit is arrested by copper Bottoni, but manages to escape. In order not to lose his job, the cop has to find the wrongdoer before three months are up. He makes friends with the Esposito family with the intention of setting a trap for the thief, but the two families' sons become friends. Both cop and robber come to an agreement on how to go about the arrest: while Esposito pretends he is going on a trip, Bottoni will take care of his family until he comes home.
MARIO MONICELLI
Italy
100 min.
One-time boxer Peppe is the ringleader of a gang of fumbling would-be robbers comprising Tiberio, Mario, Capannelle and Ferribotte, who're on to a dodgy job: to burgle the local savings bank. To blow the safe they need the help of specialist, "professor" Dante Cruciani, who shows them how to go about it. The plan is to get into the flat next to the company and break in through a hole in the wall. But they get their walls wrong and the only thing they break into is a kitchen, where they make the best of a bad job by tucking into a good meal.
FEDERICO FELLINI
Italy - France
103 min.
In a small coastal village where life is boring in winter and slightly less so in summer, five boys lead an unexciting existence, with no work or worries apart from the odd dream of escaping that they never really try to fulfill. They are Fausto, the woman chaser, Alberto, the baby-face, Leopoldo, the would-be writer, Riccardo, the lazy bones, and Moraldo, the most sensible one of the lot, who has his sights set on the capital. Fausto's marriage to Moraldo's pregnant sister is the only obvious sign of the passing of time. They lead useless lives, but don't want to change. Only Moraldo finally finds the energy to get on a train, without a word to the others, who are sound asleep and unsuspecting of their friend's desertion.
ALBERTO LATTUADA
Italy
85 min.
Town clerk Carmine de Carmine's new coat has a devastating effect on his character, bringing him out of his shell and giving him the courage to attend a party at the secretary-general's house where he even dances with Caterina, the mayor's mistress. When his coat is stolen on his way out of the gathering and the police do nothing to get it back, he turns to the mayor, who sends him packing for his outrageous behaviour. Carmine dies in desperation and his burial coincides with the arrival to the city of an important bigwig, for whom the mayor plans to role out the red carpet. But Carmine's ghost has decided to take revenge on the mayor and one night it ruins his coat.
DINO RISI
Italy
98 min.
Cousins Agnese and Cesira live together with the former's father and an old aunt. Agnese is beautiful, provocative and a great success with men, while Cesira is plain, a dreamer, and vain into the bargain. A fortune-teller has told Cesira that she will be lucky in love because she was born under the sign of Venus, and she's therefore completely convinced that she's got four men at her heels. But her dreams soon go up in smoke when it turns out that the four men don't exactly share her opinion. Mario, the photographer, fancies Agnese; Romolo's only thoughts are about how to sell a stolen car; Alesio, the poet, uses Cesira to type up his theatre piece; and the last of the bunch, the virile fireman Ignazio, gets Agnese pregnant.
LUIGI ZAMPA
Italy
90 min.
Angelina struggles to make ends meet with her husband's meagre salary in Rome's poor Pietralata neighbourhood. She becomes the local spokeswoman for the neighbours' grievances; when floods destroy their homes, Angelina prompts them to move into an empty palace belonging to councillor Garrone and her popularity increases, but not so the relationship with her husband. Garrone convinces her to get the people to move out of the palace, and her companions think she has betrayed them because her daughter Annetta has started seeing the councillor's son. Feeling deceived, Angelina re-occupies the palace and is arrested. On being let out of prison, the neighbours want her to run for the elections, but she refuses, preferring to go back to her family.
VITTORIO DE SICA
Italy
135 min.
Several episodes show us the different kinds of people who live in Naples, like an adulteress called Sofia who leads her husband to believe that she has lost her emerald ring in the pizza dough she was preparing; the mother who has a fit of pride and orders the hearse containing her son's body to be driven down the main street; the aristocratic card player who is systematically beaten by a child; or the rich man who marries a hooker when his girlfriend commits suicide.
CAMILLO MASTROCINQUE
Italy
108 min.
A deceased tenant who used to work at the Mint leaves Antonio the doorman a mould for making ten thousand lira bank notes. Unable to resist the temptation, he joins forces with a typographer and a poster artist and starts printing money. Things are going fine and they even manage to pass off one of their notes at the tobacconist's, until the complications start when they realise there's a band of counterfeiters going around and that the two of them have been mixed up. Trying not to make things worse, Antonio decides to confess, getting to the police station only to find that the other band has already been arrested. Back with his associates, the three choose to dissolve their business and burn the forgeries, but Antonio gets it wrong and destroys his own money instead.
ROBERTO ROSSELLINI
Italy
80 min.
The photographer in a tiny seaside village has a vision of his patron saint who tells him he is in possession of great power. A simple "clic" of his camera will wipe the baddies framed in his lens from the face of the earth. Although the photographer tries to use his power as best he can, he soon realises just how easy it is to make mistakes. Not only that, but he now knows it wasn't his patron saint who told him he could dabble in sorcery, but the devil in person.
DINO RISI
Italy
95 min.
Young engineer Rafaele Renzullo returns to his village form Naples after ten years of absence to be with his dying grandmother. However the truth of the story is that the old lady is in perfect health and that she has really asked him to come for two reasons: because she doesn't want a younger sister, Carmelina, to marry the ederly Emili, and because she wants her grandson to marry the richest woman in the village. But love doesn't always undertand the practicalities of life and Sabella's plans are soon thrown to the wind as Raffaele falls in love with his childhood playmate, the beautiful but penniless Lucía, and Carmelina gets married to Emilio despite Sabella's disapproval.
LUIGI ZAMPA
Italy
100 min.
In a poor part of Rome, Cencio keeps the family tradition alive by working doggedly at his profession of thief, alternating spells of freedom with time in prison. Part friendship, part need leads his beautiful neighbour Cesira to give him a hand. After a spectacular job, when Cencio disguises himself as a policeman, the thieves are about to swindle young shopowner Raimondi, when Cesira decides that she has fallen in love with the man and gives everything up to get married.
FEDERICO FELLINI
Italy
86 min.
Ivan and Vanda Cavalli go to Rome for their honeymoon. Vanda's dream is to meet the star of the series The White Sheik, but she gets mixed up with the film crew who are outside Rome looking for location shots and is given the part of a harem girl. Her meeting with the "sheik" is a big disappointment: even though he puts on a hero's face in front of the girl, he is really an objectionable being kept in line by a fat, tawdry woman. Ashamed of her unsuccessful adventure, Vanda heads back towards Rome and tries to commit suicide by throwing herself into the Tiber. However, saved by a boatman, she succeeds in getting back to the hotel just in time to go to the meeting that she and her husband have arranged with the Pope.
ALBERTO LATTUADA, FEDERICO FELLINI
Italy
100 min.
The quiet life of a small variety troupe is thrown into disruption with the arrival of Liliana and her dreams of success in the world of showbusiness. After a smash first performance, a lawyer shows an interest in the girl and invites her to his palace, much to the jealous disapproval of Checco the casting manager. Love and artistic ambition lead Checco to leave both the group and his girlfriend, Melina, to set out with Liliana in search of better contracts. Unavailing, he ends up founding a new company with the money lent to him by Melina before Liliana leaves him for a businessman who has promised her a part in a big review.
EDUARDO DE FILIPPO
Italy
100 min.
A Milanese estate agency buys a piece of land in Naples with houses that are literally falling to pieces and inhabited by people without a penny to their name. The only thing the company cares about is getting the folk out so that it can build new flats. One of the affected families decides to go to Milan to protest, and ends up finding work in the wealthy and industrialised city of the north, which has nothing in common with the poverty-stricken, undeveloped lands of the south.
EDUARDO DE FILIPPO
Italy
102 min.
During World War II, the life of a poor Naples tram driver's family is thrown into disruption when he is arrested by the Germans. He gets back to find that his wife is dabbling in the black market, his son has become a thief and his daughter is working as a prostitute. The fascists, the Nazis and the American troops have all taken their turn at the helm, but for the poor people of Naples nothing has changed, the daily struggle for survival is still the same. The need to save their young and seriously ill daughter, makes the family take another look at life and recapacitate on their values.
LUIGI COMENCINI
Italy
92 min.
Marshal Antonio Carotenuto arrives to occupy his new post in a tiny mountain village, where nothing ever happens and everyone knows what's going on in everyone else's lives. Conceited and a bit of a Don Juan, the officer takes a fancy to the young Bersagliera, an exuberant and talkative girl who is in fact besotted with a timid local policeman called Stelluti. Warned off by the priest, Carotenuto turns his attention to Anna, the midwife, who has a secret son in Rome. The two couples finally make their relationships legal, but in keeping with military regulations, marriage obliges the marshal to resign and the local policeman to take another post.
ALESSANDRO BLASETTI
Italy
96 min.
Driving the lovely Lina and three young men to the beach, taxi-driver Paolo decides to join their swimming antics, when he realises they're really trying to steal his cab. Lina's complicated explanations confuse him thoroughly and on meeting her father, Sopriano, he decides that they must, basically, be an honest family... that is, until he discovers the gold cigarette case Lina gave him is stolen, finds Sopriano lifting a suitcase at the railway station, and that father and daughter pick pockets on a bus. Paolo hustles the entire brood to the caribinieri, but the quick-witted, fast-talking father and daughter team of con-artists talk themselves out of trouble without batting an eyelid. In desperation, Paolo proposes to Lina to keep her straight. She accepts, joyfully: he's the first prize she's not had to steal.
ALESSANDRO BLASETTI
Italy
83 min.
Commander Carloni's youngest daughter is about to celebrate her First Communion on Easter Sunday. Worried when the dressmaker still hasn't arrived with the outfit only an hour-and-a-half before the ceremony is due to start, the father sets out to fetch it. Getting involved in an argument on the bus on the way back, he asks someone he doesn't know to hold the dress, only to find that the person has disappeared when he turns to get it back. Returning home without the outfit he tries to console his daughter by altering one that used to belong to a neighbour. Just as the ceremony is about to begin, the man who had taken the dress turns up at the door.
LUIGI COMENCINI
Italy
120 min.
September 1943. Young second lieutenant Innocenzi doesn't know what to do when the King of Italy and the allied forces sign an armistice. All of the men in his company flee, except for Ciccarelli, with whom he sets off home. During their travels through a country devastated by the war, he sees his compatriots being shot by the Nazis, meets an American soldier in hiding, and runs into his father, who would rather have seen him enlist with Mussolini's troops, before eventually arriving to Naples where he joins the fight against the Germans.
LUCIANO EMMER
Italy
78 min.
One Sunday in August, like so many other residents of Rome, Cesare Meloni sets off with his family to spend the day at Ostia beach. His daughter Marcella strikes up a relationship with Enrico, who shares her dream of becoming rich. On the other hand, Luciana leaves her long-standing boyfriend, Ricardo, to meet an important producer on the beach. Ricardo tries to rob from the abattoir where he works and finds himself in jail. Ercole the policeman goes to the house where his girlfriend Rosetta is employed, although maybe not for much longer since her pregnancy has put her in danger of losing her job, and she accidentally causes a fire on leaving the iron plugged in. Meanwhile, back at Ostia, and after having spent their time mutually duping each other into believing that they are aristocrats, Marcella and Enrico discover their respective origins and decide to have an affair.
DINO RISI
Italy
118 min.
Years after having saved the life of a partisan by hiding him in a barn, Elena and Silvio run into each other in Rome where the latter is working as a journalist for a left-wing newspaper. They get married and have a child, but Silvio subsequently loses both job and wife. Having unsuccessfully tried to publish a book and enter the world of cinema, he accepts a job as secretary to a financial speculator who was once accused of tax evasion. Although he earns a lot of money and gets back together with his wife, he's fed up of the humiliation he suffers at the hands of his boss and decides to go back to the "hard life".
STENO , MARIO MONICELLI
Italy
90 min.
Tired of toiling, Franca relocates herself in Rome where her ballerina chum Vera helps her to get a part with Martoni's revue. On a train journey she meets Margherita, who soon becomes the apple of Martoni's eye. Franca weds one of the two moneyed businessmen with whom she and Vera have been hanging around, while the latter prefers to stay with the troupe. Desperate when a meeting with an old flame makes her realise her marriage was a mistake, Franca commits suicide. Vera eventually meets a boy she likes and Margherita, despite her gratitute towards Martoni, and the fact that she was a great success as Franca's stand-in, signs with a big variety show.
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