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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Zabaltegi New Directors
Films
Films
Zabaltegi New Directors
Zabaltegi New Directors
Felix Randau
Germany
80 min.
A woman in her early 30s calls strangers pretending to be a young girl with cancer. In heart-rending conversations, she establishes relationships that she abruptly ends when they threaten to become too close. This is Irm?s way of reaching out from a life of working in a laundrette and looking after her bed-ridden mother. When she meets Sina, she comes up against a woman who is in great need of a friend and thinks she?s found her in Irm. Caught between the pull of her mother?s imminent death and her manipulative play-acting, Irm is increasingly drawn to Sina. She knows that one day she will have to learn the truth and fears losing her. But Sina is more tenacious than she thinks and believes in Irm more than she does herself.
Threes Anna
South Africa - Holland- -Ireland
89 min.
Melody returns home to Fairlands for the funeral of her estranged daughter June. But the town has almost disappeared under the encroaching desert. She also has to confront the fact that she has a 10-year-old grandson, River, whose existence she knew nothing about. Melody decides to take River away with her but he resists. He has worked out an ambitious plan to survive by breeding the ostriches he and his mother used to feed. His father, Scope, an idle musician and the town postman, also wants her to leave because he has a secret to hide. A series of confrontations ensues until Melody discovers the truth. It?s only when a sandstorm forces Melody and River to take shelter together that she faces some painful facts from her past, allowing both of them to reach an understanding and start a new future together.
Eric Nazarian
USA
93 min.
Set in a working-class neighbourhood by the Los Angeles River, The Blue Hour is composed of four stories examining the everyday lives of the inhabitants in one of the lesser-known Los Angeles districts. A Mexican graffiti artist paints a mural on the river, an Armenian camera repairman attempts to communicate with his grief-striken wife after the death of their daughter, a blues guitarist tries to make contact with a mysterious voice outside his hotel room and an aging English pensioner spends his days preparing for lunch by his wife?s grave. Four stories tied to the Los Angeles River, exploring the delicate ties between strangers who rarely communicate yet share brief moments of connection.
Sarah Gavron
UK
102 min.
At the tender age of 17, Nazneen?s life is turned upside down. Following an arranged marriage, she is obliged to exchange her Bangladeshi village home for a block of flats in London?s East End. In this new world, she pines for her sister and the people she left behind. While trying to do her duty to her husband and raise her family, she struggles to make sense of her existence... Until the day that Karim, a hot-headed local man, bursts into her life. Set against a background of escalating racial tension, they embark on an affair that finally forces Nazneen to take control of her life.
Max Lemcke
Spain
93 min.
Casual Day is a company practice imported from the USA. Every Friday the workers are asked to exchange their suits for more informal attire. Different companies plan their Casual Days in different ways: some organise a trip to the countryside or activities intended to better personal relations between their workers, reduce stress and improve business performance. Ruy has always lived as he liked. Though clever, he's gotten himself into a jam. José Antonio, his girlfriend's father, has earmarked an important job for him in his company. He wants him to be his successor. At the age of 25, without actually having decided anything, he's trapped. He'd like to say no to the job, to José Antonio, to Inés, his girlfriend, and to the Casual Day stuff. But it's not easy to say no. What started out as a simple event, a weekend in the country, ends up deciding the rest of his life.
Diego Fandos
Spain
99 min.
1992. Businessman Iñaki Larrea is freed from his kidnap of nine months in a tiny hole. Shortly afterwards he is moved by some news on TV: an astronaut has been "forgotten" on the MIR space station with no country to return to because his (the Soviet Union) has disappeared. The businessman feels that he must do everything he can to help the man to get back to earth as soon as possible. On the other hand, Euriane -a young waitress living in the same city as Larrea- gets the feeling that someone she doesn?t know is following her, watching her and even interfering in her life. Euriane and Iñaki have never met. But they?ve got a lot in common...
Mania Akbari
Iran
77 min.
In this sequel to Abbas Kiarostami's Ten, Mania Akbari, the leading actress of the film, again drives a car and talks to her son, her sister and other people. Her situation in this sequel differs because of her suffering from cancer. As the disease progresses, she's unable to drive. So she sits in the back of the car and the conversation continues. Unlike Ten, the camera for 10+4 has to follow her wherever she goes. This is a totally new experience in which the cancer guides the director throughout the process of making the film.
Johan Kling
Sweden
93 min.
Darling is a dark comedy about young obnoxious upper class, ordinary folks and the condition of life in the Stockholm of the 2000s. Beautiful and self-absorbed Eva engages in a banal affair that becomes the starting point of a slow but relentless descent down to the life of ordinary people and a surprising, but doomed friendship with an unemployed, 61-year-old engineer.
Anders Morgenthaler
Denmark
80 min.
Simon is a police officer who recently lost custody of his six-year old son in a divorce. Desperate, he abducts the boy and takes him to the country where they hide out in a vacated summerhouse. Simon wants to spend one last holiday alone with his son, but their week together revives nightmares from his own childhood, bringing bad memories. Soon the ghosts from his past threaten to drive Simon mad.
Stéphan Carpiaux
Luxembourg - Belgium - France
90 min.
16-year-old Alex lives with her father Frank in an isolated village in the Ardennes forest. Obliged to help him after her mother?s tragic death, Alex finds herself growing up too fast for her age. While Frank tries to escape the apathy in which he has been living since the death of his wife, Alex unwillingly revives her father's pain, plunging them both into an ambiguous world where the border between tenderness and desire is increasingly fragile. An unexpected meeting with Hector, a 22-year-old orphan whose aunt contrives to keep him immature, opens the young girl?s eyes about the relationship with her father. Together, Alex and Hector will have to shake off the burden of the past and learn to lead their own lives.
Jung Brothers
Korea
98 min.
In 1979, Dr. Park receives an old photo album from his twenties in 1942 when he and his colleagues were involved in mysterious situations. Park was bound by his parents to marry a girl he never met, but fell in love with a dead body who happened to be his arranged marriage. Meanwhile, a little girl from a fatal car accident was brought in, unhurt but haunted by ghosts every night. Running through these two odd stories, a married couple of doctors returning to the hospital from Tokyo were constantly surrounded by serial murders.
Aurélia Georges
France
82 min.
Paris, in the mid-70s. A photographer meets an emaciated, tenebrous man called Viktor Atemian. The two become friends and invent dadaist games. Atemian starts writing incessantly. Following the publication of his short story ?Fils de chien?, suddenly, with no explanation, he winds up his thriving Russian translation agency and sells his luxury apartment to some Americans. Times and the city change... His money starts running out... This is the tale of an improvised author who rises to the heights of success before crossing the desert and ending in the street. A film about the passing of time, renunciation, and plunging into the void.
Conrad Clark
China - UK
88 min.
A young building company employee has no money even to celebrate his birthday with a few beers. Asking his boss for a loan, the only thing he gets is the corpse of another employee dead on the job that the company wants done away with on the quiet. Carrying the body in his van, the youngster tries to return the dead man to his family.
Tom Fernández
Spain
100 min.
Cundo returns to Asturias ten years after having left. His best friend, Suso, has had the brilliant idea of dying and Cundo returns to the village from which he had fled to bid him a last farewell. He plans to spend a few days at home, get drunk with his old friends and leave again as fast as he can. But it?s not that easy. The loose ends he left in Asturias years ago demand a solution; ex-girlfriends, ex-lovers and ex-parents turn his life upside down while he does the same to theirs. Suddenly, Cundo discovers that Suso also left a loose end. His last great dream: to build a tower. He decides to make Suso?s wish come true and finish the construction. A last chance for the friends to do something together. Finally, Cundo may just get things right: he rebuilds his life, his family, finds the woman of his dreams and his place in the world, the place left to him by Suso.
Tzahi Grad
Israel
95 min.
Michael Klienhouse is your typical next-door neighbour, married with a child. One day, on the morning of the Holocaust Memorial Day, Michael runs into Dreyfus. Tamar, Michael's wife, has just flipped Dreyfus the finger, and Dreyfus deliberately hits the gas paddle of his car and runs into Michael's open door, almost hitting her. A law-abiding citizen, Michael hopes to resolve the situation with the help of the authorities, only to find out that the 60-year-old Dreyfus, an old war hero, is a violent man with connections and friends in high places. Michael, struggling with a personal crisis, finds it difficult to give up to the ?power?, and the coming days become his own personal nightmare. However, dealing with the harsh and corrupt reality that endangers his life and liberty gives him a new sense of being.
Salvatore Stabile
USA
100 min.
When Frank, Angela, and their two children are evicted from their New York City apartment, they have no choice but to move into a homeless shelter. After a few difficult months, good news comes their way on Christmas Eve: a nearby housing project has an apartment available immediately. However, Frank needs a job on the books in order to qualify. While the rest of the city prepares for Christmas, Frank and his ten-year-old stepson, Justin, roam the cold streets of New York trying to find a job by day's end.
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Friday: 10:00h - 14:00h
Monday to Thursday: 09:00h - 15:00h
Friday: 10:00h - 14:00h
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