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 Spain
Films
Films
Made in Spain
Made in Spain
Marc Recha
Spain
93 min.
Confused after months of searching for material to write about a time in history of which a journalist has often told him stories, Marc calls his brother David and they set off on a short holiday. But Marc can?t switch off and David takes him further south, to a place they?ve heard attracts people from far afield in pursuit of a fish with cat-like whiskers. Without realising it, the two brothers enter a countryside unknown to them, where their grandparents had experienced many an adventure, coming across a series of drifting characters who submerge them in a lost paradise.
Emilio Martínez-Lázaro
Spain
108 min.
Three years on, our heroes would seem to be settling down. Javier is about to marry Marta, a young girl who has helped him over his fear of engagement. Pedro is head over heels for Raquel, his new girlfriend, and is thinking seriously about a future together. Rafa also seems to have found happiness with Pilar, who not only loves and cares for him, but who re-educates him after her own peculiar fashion. However, Raquel and Marta have other plans that don?t exactly fit in with stable relationships. Pilar has once again found the illusion of love with an unknown beau she?s similarly re-educating, in her own style of course. And to cap the complications, a new girl appears in the boy?s lives: Carlota, sweet, unpredictable, amusing and original, for whom they obviously lose their heads (yes, the very same heads that were on the point of settling down).
Gerardo Herrero
Spain
108 min.
At 40, Juan Olmedo has survived a shipwreck from which the only thing he was able to save was his niece and his mentally retarded brother. Behind him, in a different city, he left a past as dramatic and capricious as the winds that lash the Atlantic coast of Cadiz where he flees his memories. In this out-of-the-way place, Juan meets Maribel, his cleaning lady, and Sara, another ?outsider? and newcomer like himself who unexpectedly help him face the memories that torment him relentlessly: a secret impossible love affair with his sister-in-law, and the mysterious death of the brother he loved best and hated most: Damián.
Daniel Sánchez Arévalo
Spain
105 min.
Having inherited his father?s job after the latter suffers a stroke, Jorge resists a seemingly inevitable destination. In recent years, he has struggled hard to do his work, take care of his father and study for a degree. Now he?s determined to find a new job. He meets Paula through his brother Antonio, striking up a strange relationship pushing him to lose his feeling of responsibility for everything and confront his desires, ignoring what others expect of him. So things could be different... or not. AzulOscuroCasiNegro is about a state of mind, an uncertain future, a colour. A colour we don?t always recognise, that changes depending on the light, angle and attitude from which we look at it. A colour reminding us that we often make mistakes, and that sometimes things are not the colour they seem to be.
David Trueba
Spain
118 min.
Eva and Samuel are a young couple in love who have just set up house together. Samuel finds work as a photographer with a general interest magazine, where he meets his new colleagues: an attractive current events journalist, a cynical movie critic, an atypical financial reporter, a weather-beaten sports journalist and a frustrated singer/songwriter who heads the music section. Cocooned by his workmates, Samuel tries to overcome the dual hardship of living with Eva and preserving their love for one another as a couple. Always vigilant and protective, Samuel?s mother keeps an eye on things to prevent her son from repeating the same mistakes she committed in the past. Precisely the same past that comes looking for Samuel in his fortuitous reencounter with Nieves, a childhood friend. But things start moving the day Eva announces that they?re expecting a baby.
Antonio Cuadri
Spain
90 min.
Pepe is a 50-something-year-old taxi driver, bored, with heart problems, whose life is about to do a radical about-turn. He discovers that he has a son of around 20 from a former relationship with his wife?s best friend that nobody knew existed. Jordi, Pepe?s natural son, rolls into his father?s life like a whirlwind. Smart, homosexual, HIV positive and a lover of life, Jordi approaches his unknown father with all sorts of questions for which Pepe has no answer. But sacrifice, truth and love can change everything.
Juan Millares Alonso
Spain
100 min.
Cuadernos de contabilidad de Manolo Millares is a documentary on the childhood and youth, the years of taking shape as a person and painter of one of the most intense and profound artists in contemporary Spanish painting. This tale of these years was written by Manolo Millares himself, memoire-style, in several accounting ledgers published by the IVAM in 1998. It also shows the memoires of his living brothers, and of other characters closely related to him who reflect the artistic atmosphere of the Canary Islands in the years of the Republic, the Civil War and the immediate post-war period.
Manuel Iborra
Spain
97 min.
La dama boba is set in the 17th century around two sisters who flee the male chauvinism of the period in two very different ways. One, by burying herself in books, and the other, by feigning stupidity. But the arrival of two suitors sparks competition between them. Rivality and love will make the girls discover their true personalities as the dumber of the two finally shines through as the smartest.
Chema Rodríguez
Spain
90 min.
Valeria, Vilma, Mercy and their friends dream of being treated decently, of an end to the violence they suffer every day. They are Guatemalan prostitutes, paid two bucks a service. They work in La Línea, next to the railway track that crosses the capital on its way towards the Pacific Ocean. To draw attention to their problems, the police harassment and the unpunished murders, they organised a football team, trained for weeks and entered a local tournament, only to be expelled for being prostitutes. Causing tremendous controversy in the country, with voices raised for and against, the expulsion changed their lives overnight. This is their story.
Albert Serra
Spain
113 min.
Don Quixote and Sancho trot to nowhere in particular in search of adventure. On the way they discuss spiritual, knightly, practical subjects... deepening their friendship as they go. While shooting this free adaptation of Cervantes? Don Quixote, the technical and artistic team went on their own cinematographic/life?s journey, so that the main subject of the film is the coming together of these two voyages.
Juan Miguel Gutiérrez
Spain
82 min.
The street, magic yet hard-going. Songs and music sprout from the asphalt, sometimes easy-going, at others heart-rending. All have their place on the most exceptional of stages.
Isaki Lacuesta
Spain
115 min.
The Legend of Time tells the story of Isra, the young gipsy boy who never sings again after his father?s death, despite belonging to a tradition of Flamenco singers, and who dreams of travelling far from the island on which he was born; and the story of Makiko, who comes to the island to learn more about a tradition and understand a life unfamiliar to her in the hope of being able to deal with the inexpressible emotions aroused by her father?s illness. Two characters whom, although they don?t know it yet, are about to become other people.
Fernando Guillén Cuervo
Spain
105 min.
40-something, out of work and flat broke, Maca and Rena are looking for a stroke of luck. Seeing an announcement for a TV singing contest, they decide to manage young hopefuls Pipo and David, who soon become ?Los Reyes del King?, playing bars, bingo halls and dens of iniquity, until they meet La Rota, a mysterious retired singer who pays for them to tour the Costa del Sol. Thrown into a frenetic road movie, their dreams of success become a surrealistic string of encounters with Tom Jones imitators, porn stars, mystic Arabs, psychopathic marines, American cheerleaders, corrupt councillors and aliens.
Manuel García Serrano
Spain
96 min.
The school term ends for summer. Karlita, a student at a comprehensive school in Vallecas Villa (Madrid), returns to her native country of Ecuador on holiday. Soraya, elder sister of one of Karlita?s classmates, also returns home: to Morocco. The two girls will show us some of the reasons why so many people abandon their roots in search of a better life. Pobladores is not just another film about immigration, or only about immigration. It is about different people from different countries, but with extremely similar motivations and concerns. Their characters make the audience feel hopeful rather than sad, they seek understanding instead of compassion and expose with their lives the reality of the many immigrants who don?t come to Europe in search of charity, but of a better future for their families.
Roger Gual
Spain - Argentina
95 min.
Two divorced couples return to the mountain farmhouse they shared as a community over twenty years ago on invitation from their friend Max, the only one of them who still lives there. The couples? three children, not far off 30 at this point, accompany their folks to this place of bitter-sweet memories. None of their lives has turned out as planned, and several of their frustrations and let-downs come to light during the weekend, particularly from the younger among them. Max?s excuse for inviting the group is to bid farewell to the house, which he has decided to sell for conversion into a hotel: they spend the night watching Super-8 movies and the youngsters, who can?t stop laughing at their former antics, suggest that they make a remake of the films found.
Daniel Cebrián
Spain
107 min.
Angel, just twenty and barely employed, is a man of few friends and a not too promising boxing career. Enter Vidal, a professional bank robber and real charmer just back from Argentina. Angel?s fragile world begins to crumble as he is forced to choose between the only life he knows and Vidal?s proposed future of easy cash, strong emotions, recognition and respect. Things start taking shape in his life when he decides who and what he really wants to be.
Julio Wallovits
Spain
97 min.
A man of around 40 years of age takes stock of his anxieties and fears, of the losses that have led him to have what he has... none of which he considers to be truly his own. Trapped in a knot of asphyxia, with no way out, he discovers an imitation Bauhaus chair in an antique shop and, convinced of its ability to change things, goes to get the money to buy it. The only problem is that it?s sold to someone else in the meantime.
Vicente Aranda
Spain - UK
130 min.
Famous knight Tirant Lo Blanch receives orders from the Emperor of Byzantium to free Constantinople from Turkish seige. Tirant doesn?t defraud the Empire?s expectations of a military pushover; his men are a carbon copy of the ferocious Almogavars and he a shrewd strategist not impressed by the fact that the Turks are greater in number. Knowing how to win, he proceeds to do so, using his victory to overcome Carmesina?s natural opposition to losing what she considers to be her most intimate belonging: her virginity. Carmesina -no more than a girl- is the presumed and unique heir to the Empire. Tirant is young, attractive and, by all accounts, invincible. There?s only one problem: he doesn?t come from noble lineage.
Mireia Ros
Spain
122 min.
The 80s. In a vicinity of survivors controlled by ex-legionnaires Gandhi, Fontán and Andrade, Nen and his friends Palito, Topo and Tostao dream of triumph in the world of rumba. Nen?s father, known as El Guacho, was a big-name rumba singer, but the only thing left of him is his memory. Nen discovers the reason for his father?s disappearance and the part played in the event by the relationship between his mother, Chata and Gandhi, the local kingpin. It?s time for a face-off between his desire for vengeance and his craving for triumph.
Joaquín Jordá
Spain
117 min.
Veinte años no es nada endeavours to reconstruct the last twenty-five years of our country set round the lives of those who worked on the Numax self-management experience in the late 70s. The closing party sequence of Numax presenta..., shot by Joaquín Jordá in 1979 to document the situation, serves as the starting point of this new film narrating the story of their lives since then. The marks left by these workers in the last twenty-something years contribute to faithfully depicting a class and a generation who lived through the difficult years of industrial reconversion, while their experience serves to revise and trace our country?s intense history. At the end of the day, this is the closing of a circle opened a quarter of a century ago with Numax presenta...
Isabel Coixet
Spain
112 min.
A remote spot somewhere in the middle of the sea. An oil platform employing only men on which an accident has occurred. A solitary, mysterious woman trying to forget her past is taken to the platform to care for a man who has been temporarily blinded. An extraordinary intimacy grows between them, a link replete with secrets, truths, lies, humour and pain, from which neither will emerge unscathed and which will change their lives forever.
Pedro Almodóvar
Spain
122 min.
Three generations survive the east wind, fire, madness, superstition and even death thanks to kindness, lies and boundless energy. There?s Raimunda, who?s married to an out-of-work labourer and has a teenage daughter. Sole, her sister, who earns a living as a hairdresser. And the mother of them both, who died in a fire with her husband. This character appears first to her sister and then to Sole, although those with whom she left important pending business are Raimunda and her former village neighbour, Agustina. Living and dead exist together in peace. This is a film about the culture of death in Almodóvar?s native La Mancha, the locals of which accept the situation as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The way the dead stay alive in their lives, plus the wealth and humanity of their rites, mean that they will never die.
Carlos Rodríguez
Spain
80 min.
Lidia, Nastia and Andrei are three Ukranian children who live in areas affected by the Chernobyl disaster. Despite having been born well after the accident, they all hold the Chernobyl Certificate, a card which, although it gives them the right to certain kinds of state aid and subsidies, is a burden they?ll have to carry with them forever. This is a portrait of the lives of these three children twenty years after the most serious nuclear accident in history.
Carlos Martín Ferrera
Spain
82 min.
Miguel wakes up in an underground hole with no idea how he got there. What he initially takes for some kind of a mistake turns out to be all too real. With no chance of negotiating or dealing with the only two hooded people he sees, Miguel resigns himself to fighting for his physical and psychological survival.
Albert Albacete
Spain
90 min.
What?s happening in Africa with mass immigration to the West? How is it affecting life in these countries? Bienvenido Mister Kaita is a sincere, surprising look at the effects of emigration in the different countries of origin on the African continent.
Harmonía Carmona
Spain
90 min.
Tales of love, loneliness and commitment full of happiness and the desire to change. Never before have these terms been associated to the world of prostitution. Muerte de una puta takes a hitherto unseen look at the sexual work explained to us by exceptional women who transgress all prejudices.
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