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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Films
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Opening Film (In competition)
Montxo Armendáriz
Spain - Germany
107 min.
The competition opens with one of the most eagerly awaited Spanish films of the year. In the most complex ambitious film in his career, Montxo Armendáriz has managed to maintain the constant themes in his work as a filmmaker to faithfully reflect the spirit behind the very famous novel by Bernardo Atxaga. Three stories that interweave in time and branch out into numerous characters provide an accurate portrait of the lives of some of the residents of Obaba.
Closing Film
Roger Donaldson
New Zealand
127 min.
The Australian director takes a true story, the odyssey of a pensioner from New Zealand who travelled to Utah in the 1970s to take part in a race with his old motorbike, to provide a moving lesson in humanity and tenacity, with a leading character that Anthony Hopkins imbues with innocence, irony and a love of freedom.
Not in competition
Alberto Rodríguez
Spain
86 min.
For a few hours Tano gets out of the reformatory that he has been placed in to attend his brother José's wedding. This is the time to meet up again with his best friend Richi, with his girlfriend Patri, with his nonagenarian grandmother who lives at home, with the members of his neighbourhood gang... The prospect of going back to the reformatory casts a shadow over everything. Another impressive performance by the unforgettable actor in El bola, in the latest film by the director of El factor Pilgrim and El traje, which were both premiered in Zabaltegi.
Hur Jin-ho
South Korea
105 min.
A traffic accident kills a young man and plunges the two occupants of the car into a deep coma. The husband and wife of the couple that were injured in the accident, who were lovers, meet at the hospital and join forces to face up to a difficult future. A beautiful love story that shies away from all the clichés of melodrama to focus on the intimate drama of its characters with extraordinary sensitivity and delicacy.
Fabián Bielinsky
Argentina - Spain - France
134 min.
After the resounding popular success of his debut film, Nueve reinas (Nine Queens), Fabián Bielinsky offers another formula for the perfect robbery in which nothing and nobody are quite what they seem. Ricardo Darín, who takes on the leading role in the story with his customary ease, plays the character of an epileptic taxidermist who says very little and observes everything, which encourages him, after his wife leaves him, to think up a masterly plan to rob a casino.
Simon Staho
Denmark - Sweden
112 min.
Simon Staho is a very young director with two films to his credit, Vildspoor (Wildside) and Dag og Nat (Day and Night), both of which were premiered in Zabaltegi, (the latter was shown here last year), and in both of them he already showed an outstanding personal touch. With his third full-length film, which uses the same narrative format as before, he confirms his extraordinary talent for portraying a deranged character, who through selfishness merely becomes trapped in a situation that has no way out. Staho displays remarkable virtuosity in the way he handles the production and directs his actors.
Michael Winterbottom
UK
92 min.
Winterbottom continues to surprise us. After Nine Songs, he adapts a literary classic, the innovative, unclassifiable novel Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne. With the same free spirit that inspires the text, the director uses the shooting of a film to create an imaginative ironic journey that shifts between fiction and reality, with Steve Coogan (24 Hour Party People) as master of ceremonies.
Per Fly
Denmark - Norway - Sweden - Great Britain
104 min.
A married university lecturer has a relationship with a young girl who is a member of a group of anti-globalisation activists. In an attack on an arms factory the activists kill a policeman by running over him. They all refuse to reveal who was driving the van when it ran over him. The latest film by the director of Inheritance, that won the Jury Award for Best Script at the San Sebastian Film Festival two years ago, it raises highly topical issues and doesn't dodge controversial solutions.
Not in competition
Anne Fontaine
France - Belgium
90 min.
She works for an insurance company, she's married and is the mother of a little girl. He's a vet; he lives with his mother and can't stand a solitary routine. An accident at the vet's surgery brings these two characters together and an ambiguous mysterious relationship develops between them. The director of Nettoyage à sec, among other films, achieves an intense atmosphere of suspense mainly due to the magnificent work by the two actors in the leading roles.
Tristán Bauer
Argentina
100 min.
Two men, who fought against the British army in the Falklands when they were young, meet again after twenty years. Both of them recall the hell they went through much to their regret in an absurd war. The first fictional film that deals openly with a historical episode that Argentine society would rather forget about, and which made a clean sweep in last year's Films in Progress section.
Stéphane Brizé
France
93 min.
Jean-Claude is a legal secretary, who hands out notifications and informs people of seizure orders. He is divorced, has an elderly father shut away in an old-people's home and plans the same mediocre future for his son. At the dance academy opposite his office Jean-Claude meets Françoise. A magnificent study of lonely people who discover a ray of hope thanks to the sensual captivating rhythm of the tango, in which three actors in a state of grace achieve a free-flowing conspiratorial kind of communication with the audience.
Manuel Martín Cuenca
Spain
115 min.
Ana works in an office that provides aid for refugees and doesn't know how to deal with her son Gonzalo's decision to shut himself in his bedroom; an ex-convict obsessed with chess tries to renew the relationship that he had in prison with a fellow-inmate; a Cuban smuggler has a relationship with his best client's wife. Stories about getting a second chance that blend into one another in the second full-length film by the director of La flaqueza del bolchevique, which stood out in Zabaltegi for its sound production.
Jan Cvitkovic
Slovenia - Croatia
103 min.
A confirmed bachelor earns his living by reciting texts at all the funerals held in his village. He lives with his sister, a brother-in-law who is hardly ever there, a grandfather who is determined to commit suicide and two nephews: a boy who is a nuisance and a deaf and dumb girl. A film with a strong local flavour in the best traditions of Balkan cinema that starts with situations full of gags and then soon turns into a terrible drama. The second full-length film by a Slovene director, whose debut film won awards at numerous festivals.
Andreas Dresen
Germany
100 min.
Summer in Berlin: two young women, who are friends and neighbours, try to enjoy life despite their numerous problems. One of them is mother of a child and has a problem or two with drink; the other is a determined young woman who looks after old people and is looking for a man to share her life with. The light-hearted restrained tone and the special affection it shows its two main characters, cannot hide the sadness in this portrayal of a Berlin that looks unfamiliar yet at the same time feels close.
Andreas Dresen
Czech Rep. - France - Germany
100 min.
An in-depth portrait of a group of residents in a working-class district: the young girl whose boyfriend has emigrated to America; the young man who is secretly in love with her; the abandoned mother whose lover can't make up his mind to ask for a divorce; the children that get passed around and can't get over it. It's a choral film that benefits from a rigorous script, a sound production and a solid cast. After many years away from San Sebastian, Czech cinema returns to the competition with a film full of attractive elements.
Chema de la Peña, Gabriel Velázquez
Spain - Portugal
103 min.
Stories built up around the train that links Paris with Lisbon on a journey that lasts for ages: a French xenophobic racist taxi driver and his Portuguese wife who glimpses a rewarding encounter; an African who struggles to make ends meet selling watches; a couple of youngsters who collect signatures to demand a change in the route of the train lines; two brothers who aren't speaking to each other.. A multiracial multilingual film in which the directors display a surprising degree of maturity.
Terry Gilliam
UK - Canada
122 min.
A couple of junkies and their little daughter live in a house that's falling apart. The woman suddenly dies and father and daughter move to a decrepit mansion in the countryside. When the father dies the girl builds an imaginary world for herself full of strange characters. Just like in Terry Gilliam's other films, in this "tideland" the amazing display of special effects that the director deploys to reflect the full range of his boundless imagination are more important than the twists and turns in the plot.
Ruy Guerra
Brazil - Argentina - Portugal
120 min.
An adaptation of "In Evil Hour", one of Gabriel García Márquez's least-known novels, in which two rival families are fighting for power with the self-interested mediation of representatives of the curia, the municipal government and the judiciary. Any option is acceptable to impose your own ideas on others, even though the territory you control is restricted to a poverty-stricken village. The latest film by Ruy Guerra, a historic figure in Brazilian cinema, who presented his project last year in Films in Progress.
Farida Benlyazid
Spain - Morocco
101 min.
A version of the acclaimed novel of the same name by Ángel Vázquez (1929-1980) in which the monologue by its main character takes a caustic look at life in the mythical city of Tangiers, its years of splendour and decline, and his own personal loneliness. Mariola Fuentes plays this complex character with great verve, photographed by José Luis Alcaine, another distinguished figure from Tangiers.
Zhang Yang
China - The Netherlands
129 min.
The life of a man born in 1967 portrayed through three turning points: at the age of eleven, when he learns of the existence of a father who has been absent for a long time; at the age of twenty-one, when he has to submit to his father's demands to continue his career as a painter; at the age of thirty-one, when his father disappears again. A family saga produced by the director of Xizhao (The Shower), Silver Shell for Best Director at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 1999.
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