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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Official Section
Films
Films
Alain Tanner
Switzerland - France - Germany
110 min.
Jonas et Lila, à demain takes place during the first six months of the year 2000. But instead of talking about the future, this tale is in fact the sequel to Jonas qui aura vingt-cinq ans en l'an 2000 (Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000), directed by Tanner in 1975. In fact Jonas has just turned 25, has finished his film studies and has married a young Afican girl called Lila. It's not a story in the traditional sense of hte word: the tale is broken down into some 60 scenes which gradually shape the leading characters through their relationship with each other and with different people. All of them, weakened by an uncertain world, weave a tapestry of events that could be described as "a short tale on times a-coming".
Scott Elliott
USA
125 min.
Alice and howard live in a rural Wisconsin town where the locals treat them as outsiders and their only real friends are another young couple, Dan and Theresa, who also have two little girls. Alice and Theresa have become best friends and often babysit for each other's children . One morning, momentarily distracted after having taken the four kids for a swim in the pong, Alice is horrified to discover Theresa's youngest daugther floating face-down in the water and is unable to resuscitate her despite her efforts. Alice is numbed by the terrible pain of guilt. As if that wasn't enough, a young boy at the school where she works accuses her of sexual abuse. Surprisingly, Theresa takes the stand in Alice's defence.
François Dupeyron
France
115 min.
Nicolas, a farmer's son, leads a dull, hard grind of a life with his parents and grandparents. onde day, he meets the older Maria who lives up in the hills. Nicolas is captivated. At home, things go from bad to worse and his father commits suicide in despais. Farm and family fall apart: his mother gets a job at a supermarket check-out, his grandparents are sent to an old folks' home and Nicolas searches for some knd of a job. He finally decides to work the abandoned farm up inthe hills left to him by his grandparents. He moves in, takes his grandparents out of the home, and gradually rebuilds a world for himself and his family. But there's another good reason for being up there: Maria.
Gracia Querejeta
Spain - France
97 min.
After a time without seeing one another, three sisters -Gloria, Ana and Lidia- gather together around their recently deceased mother. Although the latter, Adela, had spent the last thirty years of her life without saying a single word, she has nevertheless written her last wished ona sheet of paper. The daugthers discover that their mother wants her ashes to be divided into three parts and each one to be sent to different addresses. Gloria -47, single and lover of bolero-dancing-, Ana -a luxury whore that nobody would believe is over 40- and Lidia -pregnant for the first time at 34- start out on a journey that will end at the edge of the sea. In the car boot are the three urns containing Adela's remains. the journey becomes the key to old family secrets.
António-Pedro Vasconcelos
Luxembourg - Portugal
111 min.
Jaime lives in the city of Oporto. Jaime is 13 and has very clear ideas about the world. His mother has thrown his father out of the house and lives with a Brazilian. His father has lost his job due to his moped being robbed. Jaime knows that none of this is just. Neither is it just being out of work for not being the right age and having to be exploited by those taking advantage of clandestine child labour. But Jaime is not browbeaten. He is a born fighter and comes out as a survivor. A brave film which at no time falls into sentimentalism or into mere agit-prop.
José Luis Cuerda
Spain
95 min.
Early 1936. In a small Galician village, 8-year-old Moncho is about to star school. He's afraid. He's heard the teachers hit you. Don Gregorio, the teacher who doesn't hit his students, has to go to the boy's house and physically colect him. Don Gregorio teaches his students things that are as useful as they are unacademic: the American origin of potatoes or why butterflis have got a spiral tonghe. With the arrival of spring, Don Gregorio takes the classes out into the countryside. Observing nature is much more beneficial than hours and hours of indoor lessons. Everything comes to an end on 18th July when the values and principles they have learned are relegated to a second plane and the relationship between apprentice and teacher is cut short.
Not in competition
Michel Deville
France
107 min.
The daily life of a country doctor who has to face suffering, anziety and the violence of human relationships; in short, everything that makes people ill. his compassion, his rebellion against the arrogance of the medical body and the awareness of his own syndrome, "Sach's disease". Doctor Sachs simply listens to his patients and takes notes. Writing is his therapy, or at least his analgesic. Until he meets Pauline, thanks to whom he learns to accept suffering (since it is inevitable) and happiness (since it is possible).
Mike Figgis
USA - UK
110 min.
It is a hot midsummer's eve and the old Count departs his estate to celebrate elsewhere, leaving behind his beautiful daugther, Miss Julie, with the servants. Miss Julie is despondent after the breaking off of her engagement to be married. She dances and drinks with the servants who certainly do not accept her as one of their own. A little drunk, she finds herself alone inthe kitchen with Jean, her father's footman, a handsome and anarchistic man who is resentful of the class system but greedy to rise to the top. For many years he has watched and desired the young Miss Julie. They carry on drinking and talking until he finally seduces her. Tragedy follows as Jean humiliates Miss Julie and pushes her towards self-destruction.
Opening Film
Lawrence Kasdan
USA
113 min.
A psychologist hangs out his shingle in a small town and begins dispensing no-nonsense advice to an array of quirky locals. He's only been in town four months, but he's already the most popular psychologist around. He listens to his clients' problems, gets involved in their lives, and helps them in unexpected ways. His unique style of therapy has a surprising effect on the commnity, sparking romance in some of the most unlikely places. But the man who hears the secrets has the biggest secret of all.
Roland Suso Richter
Germany - USA
113 min.
Josef Mengele, one of Nazi Germany's most hated war criminals and presumed long dead, returns from Argentina after over 40 years of hiding to voluntarily give himself up to the authorities in order to have his day in court and tell his story to the world before he dies. A young and ambitious lawyer, Peter Rohm, who has been researching for a book about Mengle for years, is drawn into becoming his legal advisor. Although Rohm, as a human being, absolutely rejects Mengele's atrocious actions, he is forced, as his lawyer, to do everything in his power to ensure that his client gets a fair trial. Development in court endanger Rohm's marriage and uncover a series fo terrible truths about the past.
Closing Film
Martha Fiennes
UK - USA
105 min.
Leaving St. Petersburg unexpectedly on inheriting an estate in the country, Evgeny Onegin strikes up a warm friendship with one of his new neighbours, Vladimir Lensk. Tatyana, the sister of Lensky's fiancée Olga, surprises Onegin with a passionate declaration of love and he, disturbed, politely rejects her. As if to underline his rejection of Tatyana, Onegin flirts openly with Olga and is challenged to a duel by Lensky. Onegin's shot is fatal and Lensky dies. Grief-stricken, Onegin leaves and goes into self-imposed exile. Six years later, he returns to St. petersburg, where he again meets Tatyana, now married to Prince Nikitin. In realisation of the bitter mistake he made all these years ago, Onegin determines to claim her and Tatyana is faced with the most difficult decision of her life.
Not in competition
Carlos Diegues
Brazil
110 min.
Orfeu, director of a samba school, is putting the final touches to preparations for the Carnival parade when he meets Eurídice, who has just arrived in Rio and is looking for her only remaining relative since her father's death. The two fall hopelessly in love, causing the jealousy of all. On the evening of the big parade at the Sambodrome, while Orfeu leads his school, Eurídice is hit by a stray bullet shot by Lucinho, one of Orfeu's childhood friends. Wild with grief, Orfeu dies on Ash Wednesday, at the very moment the television is nnouncing his school's victory in the parade.
Christina Andreef
Australia
100 min.
Four siblings, three sisters and a brother, return to the family home after having been apart for fifteen years. They're here to nurse their sick mother Patsy. The son, Bo, is released from jail on parelo; the three sisters fight over who's best able to look after their mother, but Patsy doesn't care to be organised and have them all over her, and the father, Vic, would rather have Patsy's illness to himself. Vic can't stomach Bo and the three sisters can hardly bear to be together - or apart. In fact Patsy's greatest wish is not to be found in this family's gene pool.
Nora Hoppe
The Netherlands - Germany - Denmark - Belgium
85 min.
Bâbak fled his native country, Afghanistan, almost 20 years ago and came to live in Brussels, where he sought to forget his past, his family, his craft as a gifted calligrapher and his homeland. Now retired from a menial job of cleaning railway cars, the solitary Bâbak finds his path crossed by a stranger called SârBân who shows up in the kitchen of the shabby boarding house that same morning. The day gradually becomes for Bâbak a day of reckoning with his past and whit the nightmare that cut him off from who he really is.
Tinieblas González
Spain
16 min.
Short film
One dismal midnight, Poe is unexpectedly visited by a majestic raven that torments him and wrests the hope or recovering his list love, known to the angels as Leonor.
Not in competition
Ebrahim Hatamikia
Iran
110 min.
Mahbube is a young woman who tries to return to her home in a farm in southern Iran where she hopes to lead a paceful existence. But Qasem, who is commissioned to defuse the mines planted in the region during the war, won't let Mahbube get back to her previous home.
Colin Nutley
Sweden
118 min.
Unable to read and write, Olof lives alone on his family's farm after the death of his mother and largely depends on his younger friend Erik, who helps him in the afternoons. Out of the blue Olof places an ad in the local paper for a lady housekeeper. The result of the advertisment is that Ellen, a middle-class city woman with a mysterious past takes over the house and, as the summer goes on, Olof's heart as wll. Erik, also taken by the beauty of Ellen, tries in vain to wim her favour, only to be rejected time and again.
Bigas Luna
Spain - France
108 min.
On 23rd July 1802, Doña María del Pilar teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, the most beautiful, rich and liberated woman of the time, better known as the Duchess of Alba, throws a lavish high society banquet, only to be found dead in her bed in mysterious circumstances the following morning. She was barely 40 years old. Her death rekindles memories of their respective relationships with the deceased in Francisco de Goya, Manuel de Godoy and Pepita Tudó. Their confessions finally uncover the culprit, while the offical investigation closes with the veredict that the victim died a natural death.
Zhang Yang
China
92 min.
This is a tale of a father and two sons. It is also the story of a culture that is being lost, of a fast-disappearing world. When the elder son returns to Beijing and is once again with his father, with his younger, mentally handicapped and charming brother and in the warm and comfortable atmosphere of the bath-house where they both live and work, he has to face up to a reality that modernity tries to wipe from memory. Second movie from one of the most promising directors currently in China.
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