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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New Directors
Films
Films
New Directors
New Directors
Pedro Pérez Rosado
Spain - Puerto Rico
94 min.
The difficult work situation and love lives of two young girls who are forced to have more than one job to get by. A Spaniard and a Cuban illegal immigrant work together in a furniture factory where they have to put up with being harassed by one of their bosses in return for being treated better. The second fictional film by a veteran documentary maker, it soberly and effectively portrays situations that are very close to the audience's concerns with highly convincing performances from the two young actresses in the leading roles.
José Alcala
France
100 min.
Alex is an independent woman, savage and tough, fond of men and fond of life. She wants to obtain the custody of her son, Xavier. To earn a living, she works on markets and construction sites with Karim. She is busy renovating, on her own, a house in ruins on the outskirsts of an isolated village, driven by the hope of living there someday with her own son. The walls that she is rebuilding are like the life that she's putting back together, piece by piece, trying to make it stay upright.
Asier Altuna, Telmo Esnal
Spain
95 min.
Patricio Etxebeste runs a beret factory; he is one of the village "notables" and is a candidate in the forthcoming elections for mayor. His business isn't going well, the banks won't loan him any more money, his credit cards are blocked and his planned summer holidays in Marbella are impractical. How can he save face and prevent the entire village from finding out about the situation he's in? The makers of this debut film, who are already well known for their shorts, have dared to make fun of the most common clichés about the Basques in this farce full of gags, which is the first full-length fictional film shot entirely in Basque.
Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam
UK - India
91 min.
An American woman is preparing a story about Tibetan exiles in India. She meets a boy whose mother gave him a box just before she died that he must pass on to a monk who disappeared years before. A journey of knowledge for both characters and an investigation into Tibetan culture in the first feature film that Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have made.
Fien Troch
Belgium - Netherlands
96 min.
A child is knocked down by a hit-and-run driver. At night a woman thinks she has found the child's body on death's door and calls the police. When they get there they can't find anything, but the next morning the corpse turns up. Suspicions are aroused in the village because all its residents have something to hide. The director of this debut film displays a highly personal, chilling, incisive style in an impressive story in which the characters' unpredictable reactions transcend the aims of a conventional thriller.
Fariborz Kamkari
Iran - Italy
90 min.
A serial killer sows panic in a slum area where refugees, petty thieves and prostitutes live. A veteran policeman, who has a bad reputation with his superiors, investigates the case on his own. What starts off as a genre thriller quickly turns into a political fable in which a religious sect pursues the same aim as the governmental authorities: the elimination of all sinners. Characters, issues and images that you don't usually find in Iranian cinema.
Byambasuren Davaa
Germany
93 min.
A family of nomads move each year to a remote valley in Mongolia to spend the summer there. The father occasionally goes into town to sell some products, the mother looks after the house and the work in the fields and the children play and help as far as they can. The people who made The Story of the Weeping Camel once again use a minimalist story to show that there are other possible ways of life in the 21st century.
Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy
Belgium
84 min.
Fiona runs a fast-food joint. One night she accidentally gets locked inside the freezer. When she is rescued the next day on the verge of freezing to death, she realises that neither her husband nor her children have noticed that she's not been around. She decides to make a break with everything and heads off in search of a real iceberg. Three theatrical veterans in this debut film star in this hilarious story, which has very little dialogue and can be categorised as being genuinely inspired by Buster Keaton's or Jacques Tati's style of humour.
Roberto Gervitz
Brazil
107 min.
A man has made up a game that consists of following women on the underground who attract his attention for some reason or other. This game enables him to get to know the mother of an autistic girl, a blind girl who becomes his confidante and a professional call girl. An extremely soundly-made film that faithfully reflects the spirit of the story by Cortázar that it is based on, full of very attractive characters.
Sarah Watt
Australia
100 min.
A village is shocked by a railway accident that leaves a widow and a devastated driver in its wake. Among the residents of the village there are a photographer who has been diagnosed with cancer and who can't get over his father's death, a painter who constantly has visions with the worst possible omens and a journalist who feels he's a failure. An unusual debut film that uses highly original animated images.
Piotr Trzaskalski
Poland
117 min.
After another drunken night out, a knife thrower is fired from the circus where he worked. In his bus he travels round the country, putting on shows in the street with the help of a prostitute, an uncommunicative accordionist and a French girl who's touring round Poland. A very personal road movie in which the street shows play a very important role and the meticulous production of all the sequences really stands out. Polish cinema is back at the Festival in a big way.
Pelin Esmer
Turkey
70 min.
The women in a small town ask for help from the school teacher to put on a play that reflects their problems and needs. The men are half sceptical and half suspicious about an experiment that they consider to be outrageous. The director of this film, that fluctuates between documentary and fiction, adopts her characters' ambitions and takes the audience on a witty, entertaining instructive adventure.
Kang Yi-kwan
South Korea
118 min.
A girl avoids the propositions of an office colleague time and time again, because she's already got a boyfriend. Her boyfriend unexpectedly breaks off their relationship and she accepts her suitor's offer and marries him. However, the couple don't remain close for long. An intimist story, with a well-paced narrative style and surprisingly smooth-flowing, it also features two of the most popular young actors in Korean cinema.
Fabienne Godet
France
90 min.
A young man is fired from the company that he worked for, accused of an offence that he didn't commit and decides to kill himself. His best friend, a married man who is a father of a young child, can't tolerate the injustice of the situation and demands an explanation from the management of the company. A film dealing with social issues that doesn't neglect the intimate drama of its characters, made with surprising verve for a debut film with a wonderful cast headed by Olivier Gourmet who gives a magnificent performance.
Lee Daniels
USA
93 min.
A couple of hired killers carry out their work without displaying any emotion until the woman notices that their next victim is pregnant and she takes pity on her, helps her to give birth and puts her up in their home with the baby. A genre film with a sound script, powerful production and a top-quality cast, it's the debut film from someone who has acquired a great deal of prestige in Hollywood as an independent, since he embarked on the production of the Oscar-winning Monster's Ball (Marc Foster, 2001) whose project had been rejected by all the studios.
Antonin Svoboda
Austria - Switzerland
95 min.
The main character in this debut film is a young compulsive gambler who lives according to the dictates of a dice whose decisions he strictly carries out. A gambling debt forces him to face up to a series of problems whose solution he entrusts to chance even though this doesn't always provide the most advisable solutions. The maker of this film has mastered all aspects of its production with remarkable skill and cleverly directs the work of an actor who has extraordinary presence.
Stephen Woolley
UK
102 min.
Brian Jones, guitarist and founder member of the Rolling Stones, drowned in his swimming pool at home in 1969. Was it just an accident? Stephen Woolley, who regularly produces Neil Jordan's films, directs his first feature film and reconstructs the possible causes of Jones's death in those days of sex, drugs, rock & roll and intrigues.
Juan Villegas
Argentina
80 min.
Daniel is just about to turn thirty. The newspaper he works for gives him the job of investigating the mysterious death of a man who seems to have committed suicide. He is assigned a shy reserved girl called Marcela as a photographer. Daniel doesn't like his colleague, but he gradually gets closer to her. An intimist film full of silences, gestures and glances that suggest much more than they actually show, with a cast including some of the most promising actors in recent Argentine cinema.
Jo Sol
Spain
90 min.
An unemployed man can't think of a better way to keep his family going than to rob taxis at night to work in them and then return them with part of the money he earns as compensation for the expenses incurred. For the police he's a criminal; for a platform that is demanding for money to be handed out free to everyone, he's a political martyr. This fictional film, shot as if it were a documentary, is a satirical comedy based on real events with considerable doses of self-criticism for a highly active citizen's platform.
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