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 Selection
Films
Films
Official Selection
Official Selection
Opening Film (In competition)
David Cronenberg
USA - UK - Canada
99 min.
Mysterious, charismatic Russian-born Nikolai is the chauffeur for one of the most notorious families in the Eastern European crime ring. Headed by Semyon, the charming owner of an expensive Russian restaurant whose smiling face conceals a brutal, cold-blooded other side, the family fortune is upset by Kirill, his mad son, who listens more to Nikolai than he does to his own father. But the cautious Nikolai has an instant change of face on meeting Anna, a midwife working in a London hospital. Anna is badly upset by the conditions surrounding the death of a young girl in childbirth, and decides to find her family based on the diary she left, written in Russian. Digging into the diary, Anna unwittingly unleashes the gangsters? fury.
Wayne Wang
USA - Japan
83 min.
Mr. Shi, a widower from Beijing, goes to visit his only daughter, Yilan, in the USA. She has recently divorced and he intends to help her over the trauma. While Mr. Shi is determined that Yilan will recover her marriage and her life, his daughter starts avoiding him when he insists on knowing the reasons for her divorce. Confused, Mr. Shi explores the town and meets Madam, an older woman who fled the Iranian Revolution. They start a brief friendship ending when the woman?s son sends her to a retirement home. Facing revelations from Madam and the confrontation with Yilan, which Mr. Shi has never been prepared to face, he finally accepts things as they are, and reaches a small understanding with Yilan.
Nick Broomfield
UK
93 min.
Haditha (Iraq), November 19th 2005. Iraqi insurgents bomb a convoy of US Marines, resulting in the death of their most popular officer. Enraged by this loss, his young Marine buddies carry out a brutal retaliation. Their violent house-searches lead to the massacre of 24 people, many of whom are women and children - tragic casualties of a war they cannot control. The Marines too are victims, attacked, wounded, and forced to respond in the way they have been trained. But when events occur at great speed and under extreme stress, can Marines in the line of fire be accused of murder?
Hana Makhmalbaf
Iran - France
81 min.
Thousands of families still live beneath the statue of Buddha destroyed by the Taliban. Baktay, a six-year-old Afghan girl, is goaded into going to school by their neighbours' son who reads the alphabets in front of their cave. On her way to school, she is harassed by boys playing games cruelly mimicking their violent society. The boys want to stone Baktay or destroy her like the Buddha or shoot her like the Americans do in the labyrinth of caves. Will Baktay be able to overcome these obstacles in order to learn the alphabets of her mother tongue?
Simon Staho
Denmark
94 min.
Anna dreams of making it as an actress. Without telling her wealthy family, she moves to Copenhagen to pursue her secret ambition. But fate has other things in store for her. She falls pregnant and has a baby girl. Although she struggles to give her daughter a good start in life, she ultimately fails to combine her dream of acting with a safe and loving environment for her child, culminating in a desperate act with fatal consequences for mother and daughter alike.
Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield
UK - Germany
99 min.
Guided by the Sun, we set off on an epic tour of the world. In the Arctic, a family of polar bears wakens beneath the first rays of spring sunlight. Will they be able to find food before the ice starts melting? On the other side of the world, an elephant and her calf have to share the little available water with a proud pride of lions. Will their forced truce last? In the last part of our voyage, we follow a humpback whale who has to protect her calf on a migration of 6,000 km to the Antartic. This extraordinary, breathtaking voyage is shot with state-of-the-art, high-definition cameras in order to create an unforgettable voyage through the different seasons and the everyday struggle for survival on our planet. From incredible landscapes never seen before to the most intimate details of the lives of our beloved, evasive wild creatures.
Not in competition
Paolo Barzman
Canada
95 min.
In 1945, Jakob Bronski, a young dissident held at Drancy, takes two children, Melanie and Christopher, into his charge. 40 years later, Melanie discovers that a now elderly Jakob, whom she believed had been taken from Drancy to Auschwitz and killed, is still alive. She immediately invites him to live with her and her family on their farm in Canada. Jakob arrives with Christopher as a surprise for Melanie and both must face the truth of the bond between them. The past explodes into the present in an unexpected and tender love story altering life for themselves and for those around them.
Anahí Berneri
Argentina
93 min.
I'm an actress is how Erni Levier likes to see herself. She knows that her best years are behind her. In her Buenos Aires apartment plastered with posters of the B movies she starred in as the sex bomb du jour, she leads a surprisingly normal life, enjoying an easygoing relationship with a middle-aged man, setting up a website to keep herself in the public eye... But when she gets an invitation to her niece Ana's 15th birthday party, Erni decides to return to her hometown. For Ana, it's a time of discovery. For Erni, it's a difficult return to her roots.
Hans Weingartner
Germany - Austria
129 min.
Successful TV producer Rainer has it all: a big salary, luxurious penthouse, high life, hot car, even hotter girlfriend... He has reached the top by creating TV shows of the most stupid and vulgar kind. One day, the mysterious young Pegah vengefully drives full speed into Rainer's car. After this near-death experience, Rainer has a major change of heart and decides to produce a thought-provoking news show for his station's prime-time line-up. Devastated by the show's poor ratings, Rainer quits his job and embarks on an investigation of the audience measurement system that keeps intelligence-insulting programs at number one. Rainer, Pegah and their new friends are determined to prove that a conspiracy surrounds the boxes used in select households to estimate audience percentages, but the station execs are not willing to give up what they have built over the years...
Mi-jung Kim
South Korea
113 min.
A maid-in-waiting hangs herself within the palace walls. However, while performing the autopsy, imperial medic Chun-ryung suspects murder and starts an investigation. With a taste for justice and full of wisdom, Chun-ryung bravely uncovers the deceptions. But she is soon confronted with a hidden past kept secret by those with far more power than she could ever imagine.
John Sayles
USA
123 min.
In the rural Alabama of 1950, Tyrone, piano player and owner of the Honeydripper Lounge hopes to save the place from closure by hiring the biggest blues guitar player of the moment, Guitar Sam. Just a couple of days before the much-awaited performance, Sonny, a young guitar-player, arrives in town looking for work. He asks Tyrone for help, only to be arrested by the local sheriff and sent to pick cotton. On the day of the show, the train arrives and Guitar Sam is nowhere to be found. Tyrone has to take drastic action not to lose this big make-or-break opportunity, save the club and help launch a new musical era.
Manuel Poirier
France
97 min.
Malo, father of three young children, is about to divorce his wife. While travelling with friends, he comes across a lovely country house for sale and decides to look around. Inside, he discovers a letter written years ago by a little girl to her father. Touched and puzzled, Malo decides to find the owners of the house: two sisters in their 30s, unable to keep the home of their youth in the family. Malo falls in love with Chloe, the sister who feels the greatest attachment to the place. He soon learns that the house is to be sold at an auction and decides to buy it to make the little girl's dream come true...
Icíar Bollaín
Spain
95 min.
Ines, a detective infiltrated among the employes of a multinational concern, has uncovered some dirty business. However, her investigation places her before a complicated sentimental and ethical decision. Eva, recently back at work after maternity leave, is doing her best to combine work with family life when she discovers that her partner Iñaki has failed to tell her something essential for the future of their relationship. Carmen, the most experienced of the three, observes and records Sergio?s conjugal breakdown, not seeming to notice the dire straits of her own marriage. From the agency in Valbuena for which they work, these three professionals of surveillance often have to cross the thin line separating them from other people?s privacy, but no-one has prepared them to confront their own secrets.
Esteban Schroeder
Uruguay - Chile - Argentina
97 min.
Julia Gudari is investigating the kidnap in Uruguay of Berrios, a Chilean chemist wanted by the international authorities in connection with crimes committed by the Pinochet regime. Everything seems to indicate that the Uruguayan army is holding the man to prevent him from giving evidence as a witness. Julia, who was kidnapped and tortured during the Uruguayan dictatorship, is afraid that her father, General Gudari, is involved in the case, and her brother, also serving in the army, refuses to tell her anything. Amid the pressure and threats, Julia realises that if she wants to know the truth, she'll have to dig into her past to heal old wounds and overcome her fears.
Christopher Zalla
USA
98 min.
Juan and Pedro meet on a trailer full of illegal Mexican immigrants heading for New York. Pedro shows Juan a sealed letter given to him by his dead mother before she passed away to help him find the father he never met. He tells his new friend that Diego -his father?s name- went to New York a long time ago and is now a wealthy restaurant owner. Diego wakes up in the trailer that brought them to Brooklyn. He?s alone; his luggage and the letter with his father?s address have disappeared. Meanwhile, Juan calls at Diego?s door with the letter, pretending to be Pedro, his son. During the day, instead of working, he rakes through Diego?s flat in search of a fortune. Every passing day brings Pedro closer to finding Diego, and Juan to finding the money.
Gracia Querejeta
Spain
113 min.
Angela and her son Guille travel to the big city to see Leo, her father and the boy's grandfather, when he suddenly takes ill. However, they arrive to discover that he has just passed away. Charo, the dead man's mistress, explains the dire straits suffered by the paternal business: a hall with seven billiard tables. Charo is convinced that the only way to pay off the debts is to sell the place. However, Angela learns that her husband has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Given this painful reality, Angela resolves to get on and rebuild her life. And the first thing she decides to do is put her savings into getting the old place and its seven tables back up on its feet.
Pang Ho-Cheung
Hong Kong
94 min.
Hong Kong beat cop Tsim is taking a routine statement from Kwan, brought in for using a video camera in a women's toilet. When Kwan tells Tsim he was gathering evidence of a secret worldwide women's syndicate conspiring to exterminate men, Tsim can't tell if Kwan is attempting to escape conviction or if he genuinely believes this absurd conspiracy theory. But when Kwan disappears - along with all traces of his statement in the department archives - Tsim begins to realize that not only is the underground organization real, but it has infiltrated every level of society, even the police force. Unbeknownst to Tsim, even his own wife Cheung was once a member of the deadly group, but has quit due to her love for Tsim and her faith in him. Eager for clues and unsure of who to trust, Tsim tracks down Kwan's ex-wife Pun. But when a passionate affair brews between Tsim and Pun, the organization finds out. Now what will Cheung decide to do when the organization asks her to rejoin the group?
Paul Auster
France - Spain - Portugal
93 min.
Successful novelist Martin Frost has just published a book when he decides to take some time off in a country house. On waking the first morning, Frost is amazed to discover a mysterious stunning woman lying next to him. Fascinated by her beauty and intelligence, Martin falls deeply in love with her, thinking that he has found the muse who will help him to write the perfect book. Who is this strange woman that knows life and work so well? Is she a real muse? Is she a figment of his imagination? Is she a ghost who has slipped into the inner life of Martin Frost?
Not in competition
Closing Film
Michael Radford
UK - Luxembourg
108 min.
In 1960, Laura Quinn, a dedicated executive at the London Diamond Corporation, the biggest gem outfit in the world, is furious with frustration at the fact that her career is obstructed by the male chauvinism dominating working life within the company. She forms an alliance with Mr. Hobbs, a bitter soon-to-retire maintenance man who feels betrayed after a lifetime?s work for the firm. Together they plan the perfect heist, an audacious robbery in the company that has treated them so badly.
Not in competition
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Opening hours
Monday to Thursday: 09:00h - 15:00h
Friday: 10:00h - 14:00h
Monday to Thursday: 09:00h - 15:00h
Friday: 10:00h - 14:00h
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