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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Made in Spanish '98
Films
Films
ALEJANDRO AMENÁBAR
Spain
117 min.
In the darkness of a prison psychiatric unit, 25-year-old Cesar begins to tell his version of how he has actually come to be there. Apart from his good looks and irresistibility to women, it would seem that he had also inherited a considerable fortune. After a meeting with Sofia orchestrated by his best friend Pelayo had apparently left the two of them head over heels with each other, fate had put him at the mercy of Nuria, a young woman who was infatuated with him to the point of obsession. Having unsuccessfully tried to shake her off, Cesar had found himself obliged to accept her offer of a lift home, during which Nuria's insane jealousy had led her to run the car off the road, killing herself and leaving Cesar badly and irremediably disfigured in the process. As if that wasn't bad enough, things had become even more complicated when Nuria had suddenly reappeared alleging to be the real Sofia.
EDUARDO CAMPOY
Spain
98 min.
A late-late radio show is interrupted by a caller who claims to have murdered four women and plans to kill another one that same night. He makes the ambitious D.J. journalist an offer: if she finds the girl within the hour, he'll leave her alone; but if she fails in the quest, it will cost her her life. María Ramos, the judge in charge of the case, puts together a team of experts including Javier, a forensic psychiatrist and specialist in mass murders. Although María is suspicious of Javier, the latter puts a stick in her wheels by instigating an entangled plot to bring judge and journalist into personal and professional confrontation.
VENTURA PONS
Spain
94 min.
Present day, end of the millenium. Night-time in a city of profound disquiet. Eleven stories about eleven beings with no logical links or sequencing and the ins and outs of their sentimental lives. These are people who never quite get round to caressing each other (to communicating, loving); situations where they bare their deepest emotions, and their lowest instincts. Sour love, sweet love, love in any shape or size. Despite their proximity, they could well be complete strangers. They talk without listening, listen without hearing, and act without looking; but there might just be a ray of hope, a chance of communication, the possibility of a caress.
PEDRO ALMODÓVAR
Spain - France
105 min.
Immature and something of an outcast, teenage Victor turns up at the house of the woman to whom he lost his virginity, Elena, who isn't exactly overjoyed to see him when she realises he's not her much awaited drug dealer. Tipped off by a neighbour, officers David and Sancho turn up at the house. During the ensuing struggle between Sancho and Victor, David is hit by a stray bullet that puts him in a wheelchair for life. Seven years later, David is married to Elena and Victor gets out of prison with a hankering for revenge. He meets Clara, Sancho's long suffering wife, who has had enough of her husband's beatings and sees Victor as the opening to a new life, but Victor has other plans, like a reunion with Elena. The characters are all linked by a common destiny from which none of them will be able to escape.
EMILIO MARTÍNEZ-LÁZARO
Spain
108 min.
A young teenager and his father travel endlessly throughout the Spain of 1974 with only a car to their name. On a constant house-move, the places they inhabit are always the same: they're beside the sea, dreary and unoccupied in the low season. Felipe is therefore accustomed to the drab landscape of the lonely, wintry beaches. But it won't be long before they have to move away from the beach and the lives they know so well.
MANUEL GUTIÉRREZ ARAGÓN
Spain
110 min.
Three lovely young sisters, Nena, Rosa and Ludmilla, leave the Cuban capital of Havana for a better life in Madrid. Although their also Cuban ex-pat Aunt Maria takes them in affectionately enough, she soon turns the fact that they have no work permits to her advantage by exploiting them in her small fur business. Despite her older sisters' full support, the younger sister and aspiring actress, Nena, has to get round her aunt's plans to marry her off to Javier, her friend's homosexual son. Up to her neck in a steamy affair with the rowdy Igor, it had never even crossed Nena's mind that their aunt's friend and the girls' guardian angel would also fall prey to the boy's seductive charms.
JANA BOKOVA
Argentina - Spain - France - The Netherlands
96 min.
Young would-be author Elías tries to get his head round life by hanging out at the Buenos Aires docks with hookers, ship-hands and crooks. He lives like a tramp and earns what he can by translating the letters received by the prostitutes from clients and lovers. Inevitably becoming involved with one of the girls, Anabel, Elías still hasn't made his break from the highborn Susana and her stoic determination to find him a steady job with a publishing house. Unwittingly implicated in a plot that turns to murder, fear drives Elías away from both the harbour and Anabel; but by the time he comes back to get her it's too late.
MARISA SISTACH, JOSE BUIL
México
95 min.
Mexico, 1910. Valentina and her printer father are being hounded for their activities against the dictator Porfirio Díaz. When her father is arrested, the girl escapes with some gold coins and the intention of making it to El Paso where she wants to give the money to Madero, the man at the forefront of the revolt against Díaz. Valentina is entrusted to the son of a travelling circus owner, Victor, by her French friend, Guy, a Lumière employee whose job is to introduce cinematography to Mexico. Valentina sets off on an eventful journey during which she hears that her father has been murdered, while Victor learns how to use a camera and becomes the first Mexican to film the revolution.
ENRIQUE URBIZU
Spain - France - Italy
90 min.
When Leocadio Mínguez turns up dead on the same day he was supposed to give evidence in a corruption case, someone asks Pepe Carvalho to take the case. Carvalho accepts, only to discover that Leocadio was pumping his political party full of illegal funds. Under pressure from the judges, Mínguez had handed over a list of implicated names the detective badly needs as his only lead. Videos on the dead man's private life turn up and, as Carvalho gets deeper into the case, so do new bodies. Everyone wants him to stop investigating. Realising he's in danger, Carvalho decides to use his wits and the multiplying effect of the media.
FERNANDO MUSA
Argentina
95 min.
Somewhere between rock and tango, good and bad, young thieves Panta and Fideo dream of going to their Promised Land: the USA. An action story with the cops hot on the heels of these two young heartbreaking rogues, this is also a tale of the love, treason, illusions and adventures of desperate, but happy beings.
FRANCESC BELLMUNT
Spain
117 min.
In a peculiar family of liberal background, two bachelor uncles play father and mother to their orphaned nephews. A repressive school, the omnipresent Church and forces of law and order, quiet brothels and warm cafés all contribute to shaping the scenarios and characters of the film. A look at the early and not so early memories of Ferran Torres, author of the book on which the screenplay is based, and his brother Pepin in the Valencia of the 60s, a city and an era when almost anything went, to the surprise or outrage of just about no-body.
CHUS GUTIÉRREZ
Spain
110 min.
No-one's sleeping tonight in Madrid. Eva's new baby is complicating her life - and her husband's. Alba is certainly not about to take her boyfriend's desertion sitting down; while Juan, feeling caged in by his engagement to Isabel, is "happily" showing his friends round their new flat. Inextricably drawn together by insomnia, the lives of Alba, Juan and Eva will never be quite the same again.
BIGAS LUNA
France- Italy- Germany- Spain
100 min.
France, 1912. Horty, a young foundry worker, wins a trip to Southampton to see the Titanic set sail. During the night, he is visited in the Grand Hotel by the beautiful Marie, who claims to be a chambermaid on the Titanic with nowhere to stay for the night as there are no rooms left in town. Disappointed when she has already left the next morning, Horty sees her leaving on the ship, but can't get near her and has to make do with a photograph. On returning to his village, Horty fantasises about the girl, telling the story of their meeting in such great detail that he soon becomes a big attraction, until they get news that the Titanic has gone down and Marie's name isn't on the list of survivors.
FERNANDO SPINER
Argentina
105 min.
Buenos Aires, in the year 2010. Secret experiments with a new psychic weapon have gone out of control, causing total memory loss in hundreds of thousands of people. To reinsert those affected into society, the authorities give everyone a make-believe family, home and profession... But someone is against the move and summons the resistance. His name is Gauna, and no-one knows where to find him. Young Eva Rey, a victim of the mind-obliterating radiation, is caught and submitted to special surveillance by Doctor Gazzar, who realises that Guana can be visualised through her dreams. Learning this, the authorities set the girl free so that she can take them to the legendary leader.
ANTONIO GIMÉNEZ-RICO
Spain
97 min.
A harsh, tragic vision of the Castile of the 50s, depicted through a gallery of characters who fiercely defend their freedom and whose very existence seems determined by the cycles of nature and the social and geographical milieu in which they live. Among them is, Nini, a boy whose only school is the natural setting in which he was born. He lives with his father in a cave, and the two earn a living by hunting water rats, the only profession they know. Only when they try to deprive the two of the roof over their heads and their livelihood does unchecked violence and tragedy explode.
MANUEL PALACIOS
Spain
65 min.
One-time merchant seaman Estéves now lives and works in Lisbon as a waiter fraught with the desperation of an erstwhile oriental inamorata. His very existence, not to mention his love for a woman and his city, shudder at the foundations on encountering
SANTIAGO RÍOS, TEODORO RÍOS
Spain
109 min.
Goyo Rodriguez joins the Spanish forces in the struggle against the Cuban guerrilla (the Mambises) in the war of 1895. On arriving to Cuba, he falls for a member of the insurgent movement, Ofelia, who takes advantage of his naivety to send her comrades messages. When unscrupulous Captain Gonzalo puts him to the test by ordering him to kill a prisoner, Goyo refuses and heads for the mountains to escape arrest, only to be caught by fugitive slaves who take him to the Mambi leader, Nazario - and Ofelia. In spite of having deserted, Goyo refuses to join the Mambi forces, until he finds himself obliged to kill a Spanish soldier in Ofelia's defence.
SALVADOR GARCÍA RUIZ
Spain
105 min.
The ups and downs of a group of youngsters during an autumn when their lives are probably going to do a complete about-turn. All big city dwellers, the disparity of their social backgrounds can't break the invisible threads which gradually and unknowingly pull them towards a peculiar, and much smaller, world than they had ever imagined.
CARLOS SAURA
Spain
104 min.
Not long after his tenth birthday, Manu sets out for the first time in his life to Murcia, where he is to spend some time with his father's family while his parents sort out their divorce. As exuberant as its surroundings, Manu's family offers him a feast of dishes such as the tender and incipient love for his cousin Fuensanta, the more seasoned discovery of sex among adults, or the distastefulness of death on its visit to the seaside. Digesting this fare is not just a price to pay, it's also one of life's little pleasures.
FERNANDO DIAZ
Argentina
100 min.
Young Marcelo makes a living painting in a square with other street artists. Rejected and lonely as a result of his family's disintegration, he puts all his strength into the relationship with his girlfriend. But the girl has other plans that are causing a conflict which only gets worse when she tells him she's pregnant. Marcelo unexpectedly discovers the reasons for his family separation and events that happened several decades before echo in him as a bitter joke of destiny. Reality violently opens his eyes, perhaps permitting him to see the future more clearly.
JAIME CHAVARRI
Spain - Argentina
94 min.
Tango singer Renzo Franchi lives as he can in the emigrant-packed Buenos Aires of the 30s. But things are never quite the same after his meeting with Gustavo's girlfriend, Juanita, who convinces him he's a Carlos Gardel lookalike. Franchi becomes a perfect double of the famous singer, never once imagining that his resemblance to the man was going to have such surprising consequences or such a devastating effect on their lives.
CARMEN GUARINI, MARCELO CÉSPEDES
Argentina
70 min.
A documentary in the shape of a metaphor on a society plagued by violent outbursts that scream out at us each day from the newspaper headlines, Blood Ink is not about police news, but about those who create it: a group of journalists whose corrosive humour is counterbalanced by existencial scepticism. Perhaps one of the remarks made in the documentary best sums up the paradox of so much horror: "In a country of missing people, a mention in the paper, no matter how short, means you're still here".
SANTIAGO SEGURA
Spain
99 min.
A drunk, chauvinist, ex-cop and devout supporter of Atletico de Madrid, Torrente spends his nights patrolling the neighbourhood, while his wheelchair-bound father has to beg. He lives in the same building as Amparito, a young and irresistable nymphomaniac who gives a hand in her aunt's fish shop, and ends up becoming a guru to Rafi, the girl's American movie and firearm loving cousin. Meanwhile, the "Frances's" motley crew of mafiosos are in continual dispute with the Chinese restaurant owners for control of the local drug ring. Only Torrente and a fistful of weird teenagers he's hired to do the dirty work are capable of cleaning up the area and restoring law and order to the streets.
DANIEL DÍAZ TORRES
Cuba - Spain - Germany
112 min.
In the darkness of a rainy 90s Havana night, the body of a German tourist is found with a bottle in his hand and a pair of big white angel's wings on his back. It looks like a straight forward case: drunken tourist falls off roof-top during fancy-dress rave. But for Lorenzo Columbié, a country cop recently posted to Havana, this could be the one to change his boring career, and he starts questioning the people who had anything to do with the man. They're all under suspicion and everything points to one of them having pushed the German off the roof. Against the will of his boss, Lorenzo goes ahead with his investigation.
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