San Sebastian Film Festival ::

Agustí Villaronga, Lydia Zimmermann, Isaac P. Racine

Spain - Mexico

94 min.

In 1981, the Hungarian Aro Tolbukhin was arrested for having burned alive seven people in the infirmary of Guatemala's Misión del Divino Redentor. In detention, Aro Tolbukhin also confessed to having killed five women and burnt their corpses. Not only that, but he pleaded guilty to having assassinated another seventeen women, all pregnant, over the fifteen years during which he had worked as a merchant seaman. On examining the unsolved files of these cases, the judicial investigation didn't take long to find substantial incoherence raising doubts about the responsibility Tolbukhin so insisted was his. He was condemned to death. Shortly before his execution he was interviewed by two French documentary makers. Based on this material, the film attempts to take a closer look at this character and the reasons for his behaviour.

Auto Focus

Paul Schrader

USA

100 min.

Auto Focus is an absorbing glimpse into the colourful life and mysterious death of actor Bob Crane. Handsome and charming, Crane became well known as the star of television's hit comedy Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971). Capitalizing on his fame, Crane dove into the freewheeling spirit of the times with relish, having affairs with numerous women. Eventually, Crane teamed up with video technician John Carpenter to document his exploits, an association that may well have led to his murder in a Scottsdale (Arizona) motel room in 1978.

Closing Film

Décalage horaire (Jet Lag) / Jet Lag

Danièle Thompson

France

91 min.

It's the start of the school holidays and we're at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. The pilots are on strike, the computers are down, the passengers are stuck and there are two of them in every corner. Rose, a make-up artist concealing her vulnerability beneath a thick layer of cosmetics, has bought a last-minute ticket for Mexico to escape from the man she has long been trying to leave. Félix, an aggressive executive who has made a fortune in the United States, is travelling first-class to Munich to find the woman he thinks he loves. Neither of them have any intention of meeting anyone else. But in the space of 24 hours, these two individuals with seemingly nothing in common set out on the most unexpected and beautiful voyage of their lives.

Not in competition

El crimen del Padre Amaro / Sacred Crime

Carlos Carrera

Mexico - Spain - France - Argentina

118 min.

Father Amaro condenses in his person contradictory passions. Though desirous of carrying out the church's duty with the needy, he nevertheless endeavours not to disobey the dispositions of the Diocese. He also wants without interfering with his career to preserve his relationship with young Amelia - a clear example of the confusion between divine and carnal love facilitated by Catholic mysticism. Father Benito accepts donations from drug lords, which he uses for charitable purposes. He also loves Sanjuanera, Amelia's mother. Father Natalio quite clearly puts obedience to his parish before the ecclesiastic authorities by organizing the guerrilla fighters in the mountains. The old Dionisia, devout and an exorcist, lives her craziness through religion, becoming Father Amaro's confident when he finds himself in a terrible dilemma.

El Leyton

Gonzalo Justiniano

Chile - France

95 min.

Fishermen Leyton and Modesto have been friends all their lives. Leyton is happy-go-lucky, takes things as they come and enjoys living for the moment with no complications, particularly with women who have been ?neglected? by their husbands, making him the person most loved and hated by Caleta. Modesto, Leyton's friend and confidant, is completely the opposite: laid-back and faithful. Modesto suddenly surprises everyone by marrying Marta, a quiet girl without much experience in love. Leyton harasses Marta, whom, to his surprise, utters nothing of the situation to her husband, leading to an adventure taking them towards a road of no return, destined to change the locals' monotonous lives.

Elsker dig for evigt / Open Hearts / Open Hearts

Susanne Bier

Denmark

113 min.

Cecilie and Joachim are young and in love. Soon to be married, with their whole lives ahead of them, all of a sudden everything is turned upside down. Things change not only for Cecilie and Joaquim, but also for Marie and Niels. Both in their late thirties, they have three children and enjoy a marital bliss sorely put to the test when Niels falls passionately in love with Cecilie. The question is whether Niels and Cecilie are ready to give up everything for the sake of their love. One thing's for sure: nothing will ever be the same again.

Ghat e-ye zemestani (The Winter Song) / The Winter Song

Farhad Mehranfar

Iran

90 min.

Nazbanu and her children live high in the Delfak mountains. The arrival of autumn brings a strange teacher and her exceedingly unconventional teaching methods to their wilderness. This is a song inspired by Nature and dedicated to Nature.

Hafid (The Sea) / The Sea

Baltasar Kormákur

Iceland - France - Norway

110 min.

Feeling his strength decline, Thordur, the old, feared and respected head of his family, invites his children to come back to the village to set his affairs in order: their mother's inheritance and the family business, which has made him one of the most powerful men in this small Icelandic fishing community. His hopes rest on Agust, his younger son, a business student in Paris where he is living with a French girlfriend. Thordur is convinced that Agust will come back and stay after completing his studies in order to take over the fishery currently managed by Haraldur, the elder son he does not particularly trust. But Thordur doesn't know that Agust has totally different plans for his future. Old ghosts come to the surface, and the family gathering doesn't go off as expected or hoped.

Han ni zai yiki (Together) / Together

Chen Kaige

China

114 min.

Xiaochun has been playing the violin ever since was able to hold it. Now, at 13, with several awards to his name, he is the pride and joy of his father, a chef who has put all of his hopes on his son's success. Father and son set out for Beijing, where the boy will further his studies. The big city has a strong impression on Xiaochun, but not as much as it does on Lili, a girl he sees at the station and who turns out to be his neighbour in the metropolis. Lili is destined to become his first love, his first amorous let-down and his first real friend. His father, on the other hand, never falters in his quest to find a teacher for Xiaochun capable of putting the boy on the road to international fame. However, finally having found the person he was looking for, the teacher pits the boy's skill against his other favourite student, Lin Yu. On the eve of an extremely important performance before a jury, professor Yu tells Xiaochun a secret which will change his life forever.

Historias mínimas

Carlos Sorín

Argentina - Spain

94 min.

Three people travel along the lonely roads of Patagonia. Don Justo (80), the retired owner of a warehouse now run by his son, who has flown the latter's guardianship to look for his long-missing dog. Roberto (40), a travelling salesman, follows the same road with an awkward load: a birthday cake for the son of a recently widowed woman to whom he intends to confess his desire to form a steady couple. And, travelling with her young daughter, María Flores, a poor woman who has won the draw on a TV programme. Although she has no idea what the prize is and has no money to her name, she sets off on the voyage towards the far-off and fascinating world of television. Though travelling on their own, their paths eventually cross one another. Historias mínimas was selected as a result of its presentation in Cinéma en Construcción (Films in Progress, Toulouse, March 2002)

La vie promise (Ghost River) / Ghost River

Olivier Dahan

France

92 min.

A 40 year-old prostitute living in Nice, Sylvia's relationship with her teenage daughter Laurence mirrors her existence: stormy, desperate, seemingly hopeless. One evening, Laurence witnesses a violent confrontation between her mother and two men. When she intervenes, things turn very ugly. The only option open to mother and daughter is to take flight. The alternative is prison, or worse. Sylvia thinks that Piotr, her ex-husband who lives in the Jura and with whom she had a son, can help them, but she doesn't know his address and her memory's shot. Their meeting with a mysterious fellow fugitive called Joshua takes Sylvia on a painful journey back to her past and the child she abandoned years before.

Los lunes al sol / Mondays in the Sun

Fernando León de Aranoa

Spain

113 min.

A northern, coastal city, from which the countryside disappeared many a year ago, surrounded by industries responsible for the spurts of exaggerated growth that nurture immigration and workers, outlining a horizon of chimneys, rooftops and hopes, of future uprootings. A group of men who daily walk the sloping streets, looking for life's emergency exits. Long-term fear, end-(and beginning)-of-the-month tightrope walkers with neither safety net nor audience, no final applause, making their way daily along the tightrope of casual work, scaffolding their hopes and taking shelter in their occasional pleasures, conversation, routine, as if the shipwreck from which they daily attempt to save themselves wasn't theirs, while they talk about things and laugh, about everything and nothing particular, hopeful, at peace, on a sunny Monday morning.

Lubovnik (The Lover)

Valeriy Todorovskiy

Russia

100 min.

The heart-breaking story of two men's for the same woman. One of them is a university professor, the other an ex-soldier. A common tragedy unites these two completely different people who didn't even know each other. They learn a lot about themselves and about the woman with whom they were in love, whose death accidentally bought them together.

Lugares comunes / Common Ground

Adolfo Aristarain

Spain - Argentina

112 min.

Fernando Robles, a university professor of education from Buenos Aires, won't see this side of 60 again. He teaches how to teach. He has been married for most of his life to Liliana Rovira, a Spanish descendent of Catalonian parents, who has a job as a social worker in the poor neighbourhoods of the city. They love, respect and are faithful to each other, never tiring of one another's company. Their son, Pedro, married with two sons, has a good job in Madrid, where he lives in a prosperous middle-class suburb. With effort and resignation, Fernando and Liliana manage to cope with the long periods of time the family is apart, deprivation, an uncertain future, a lack of goals and despair. But Fernando's calm and thoughtful world is badly shaken when he unexpectedly receives official notice forcing him to retire, an event that will change his life...

Octavia

Basilio Martín Patino

Spain

130 min.

Rodrigo, a very young non-conformist at Louvaine University, ex-Latin-American guerrilla fighter, ex-secret agent in the East, ex-civil servant with international bodies, etc., reconsiders his militant activity in causes aimed at purifying the post-war world. Now that Utopias have fallen into disrepute, global order has been introduced to the markets, September 11 has exacerbated witch-hunting and spying. Rodrigo, trapped in his excesses, is beaten into refuge at the family estate he left 40 years before. Reincorporated to what's left of the old traditional clan, he has to assume his other private chaos. Young Octavia, bizarrely added to the clique, bewildered amid historical forebears she doesn't understand and, a stranger to the regression-repression appearing on the horizon, claims the right to a different existence, to a rationally inhabitable world. Impossible freedom? Times of fundamentalism, of inquisition, of perplexity.

Pigs Will Fly

Eoin Moore

Germany

102 min.

Though Berlin policeman Laxe is determined to control everyone's lives, he too has a serious problem requiring solution: he beats his wife, Manuela. After hospitalising her for the eleventh time, he decides to visit his brother Walter in San Francisco and put some kind of order into his psychological confusion. Separated since their younger years, when their mother left their father, Laxe's visit turns up the ground for both brothers and memories of their violent childhood resurface. Laxe falls for Walter's flatmate, Inga, insisting on helping her to get her life together. Walter looks on horrified as Laxe falls back into his customary behaviour: taking control of Inga's life. Laxe is faced with an ultimate challenge when Inga admits that she is pregnant by someone she refuses to name.

Opening Film

The Good Thief

Neil Jordan

UK - USA - Canada

110 min.

Bob Montagnet is an American gambler and thief who has ended up in the South of France, out of luck and out of money. In his heroin induced haze, he meets Anne, a young Eastern European girl trapped by Remi, a local pimp. When the place is raided by the police, Bob saves the life of Roger, the detective, with whom he is oddly united by a special bond stretching back years. He also saves Anne, leaving her in the safe hands of a trusted friend. When Bob hits rock bottom after losing the last of his cash at the races, his other henchman, Raoul, suggests he join them in their plans for one last, spectacular heist in Monte Carlo. After shaking off his junkie habit, Bob reforms the old gang. With the help of security genius Vladimir, they plan to rob not the safe of the Riviera Casino, but the vault which contains priceless works of art.

The Legend of Suriyothai

Chatri Chalerm Yukol

Thailand - USA

154 min.

Young Princess Suriyothai has to decide between marrying her true love, a gallant warrior named Piren, or to do her duty and marry Prince Tien, the man who has chosen her as his wife. Following the death of King Ramathibodi II, in 1529, Prince Chai Raja organizes a coup d'etat and takes power, but his wife, Srisudachan, plots her husband's downfall in favour of her lover Worawongsa. Srisudachan poisons Chai Raja; but a band of loyalists joins Princess Suriyothai in a daring sneak attack to restore the rightful king, Tien Raja, to the throne. In a last valiant effort, Suriyothai heroically rides an elephant into battle against the Burmese as they invade Ayuthaya, the capital of Siam.

Not in competition

Umi wa Miteita (The Sea Watches) / The Sea Watches

Kei Kumai

Japan

119 min.

Working in a brothel in the quaint little coastal town of Okabasho in the Japan of the 19th century, the young and innocent O-Shin finds herself falling for a samurai who visits her brothel. Her older sister, Kikuno, warns her about falling in love, although deep down she would like her sister to marry the samurai. Time passes, and O-Shin meets Ryosuke, a weary, troubled customer to whom she teaches the meaning and joys of life as their relationship develops into one of interdependence and respect. Kikuno yet again acvises her sister to pull himself together. When it looks as if there is no way out for the girl, a thunderous storm hits Okabasho and all of the villagers flee, leaving Kikuno and O-Shin stranded. The ocean, which had not expressed its anger until then, floods the streets and brothels of the town. But the tide carries all of the sisters' worries into the sea as they rediscover a long awaited calm.

Whale Rider

Niki Caro

New Zealand

105 min.

In a small New Zealand coastal village, Maori claim descent from Paikea, an ancestor brought to the island on the back of a whale when his canoe over-turned. Generation upon generation, a male heir succeeds to the title. The time has now come to appoint a new heir, but there's a problem: twins are born, a boy and a girl, but only the latter survives. Koro, the chief, refuses to acknowledge Pai as the new leader, convinced that the tribe's misfortunes began at her birth, thus Pai, despite loving Koro more than anything in the world, has to fight against both forebear and a thousand years of tradition to fulfil her destiny.

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