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
Richard Eyre
UK
90 min.
Peter and Lisa are settled in the comfort of their long-term marriage. Lisa is a successful shoe designer and Peter runs his own company. It is the night of the launch of Lisa's latest collection, and at dinner she seems evasive - and then odd. "Do you think two people can live together all their lives? Do you never wish you'd been given the chance to sleep with someone else?" she asks him. Then she is gone. Peter struggles to find answers, following a trail to Italy. There he meets Ralph, a slick charmer who is plainly Lisa's lover. But Ralph has secrets of his own...
Not in competition
Closing Film
Rian Johnson
USA
109 min.
The brothers Bloom have perfected the art of swindling fortunes through years of fraternal teamwork in doing their victims out of literally millions thanks to complicated set-ups where nothing is as it seems. Now they've decided to take on one last spectacular job before retirement, luring into an elaborate plot a mysterious, eccentric and beautiful heiress to an immense fortune. But what looks like just another of so many grifts is put to the test by a prey who?s not quite as innocent as the Blooms had imagined.
Not in competition
Hirokazu Koreeda
Japan
114 min.
Aruitemo, aruitemo is a family drama about grown children visiting their elderly parents, which unfolds over one summer day. The aging parents have lived in the family home for decades. Their son and daughter return for a rare family reunion, bringing their own families with them. They have gathered to commemorate the tragic death of the eldest son, who drowned in an accident fifteen years ago. Although the roomy house is as comforting and unchanging as the mother's homemade feast, everyone in the family has subtly changed. This is a typical dysfunctional family, bonded by love as well as resentments and secrets.
Samira Makhmalbaf
Iran-France
101 min.
In exchange for a dollar a day, a boy carries a lame youngster to and from school like a horse. While carrying the child, he races donkeys and horses in the street. He bathes, washes and gets him ready to start the day. But the lame boy isn?t happy because his steed hasn?t turned into a real horse as he wished...
Christophe Honoré
France
88 min.
Following her mother?s death, 16-year-old Junie changes high school mid-year and finds herself in the same class as her cousin Mathias, who introduces her to his friends. All the boys want to date Junie, and she chooses the quietest among them, Otto Clèves. But soon after, she encounters the great love of her life in her Italian teacher, Nemours. The passion that burns between them is doomed. Junie refuses to give in to her feelings and persists in denying herself happiness, which in her eyes is merely illusory. A contemporary adaptation of Madame de La Fayette?s novel, The Princess of Clèves, transferring the action from the court of Henry II to modern day Paris.
Kim Ki-duk
South Korea
93 min.
Jin wakes up from a nightmare of a traffic accident on the way to his ex-girlfriend's home. The dream drives him to the very spot and stumbles upon an aftermath of an accident, which unfolded in the same way as his dream. He follows the police to the suspect's home and watches Ran deny the hit-and-run accusation since she was asleep the entire night. Jin explains his dream to the police and asks to be charged instead. The police dismiss him as a nut and arrest Ran. He soon discovers that when he dreams, Ran unconsciously acts out his dream while sleepwalking.
Javier Fesser
Spain
143 min.
Based on a true story, Camino is an emotional adventure set around a dazzling 11-year-old girl simultaneously faced with two completely new events in her life: falling in love and dying. Above all, Camino is a bright light capable of shining through every one of the dark doors that try to stifle her desire to live, love and find happiness once and for all.
Kristian Levring
Denmark
95 min.
When Michael hears about a clinical trial for a new anti-depressant, he signs up on a whim. Unfortunately, the pills turn out to have serious side effects and the trial is abandoned. Michael refuses to give up the new-found sense of calm and self control which the pills have provided, so decides to continue the experiment on his own. Intoxicated by his immediate success, Michael feels an urge to take control of other people?s lives as well. Slowly, his psychological games grow more drastic, until Michael makes a discovery which forces him to view his actions in a terrifying new light.
Rashid Masharawi
Tunisia-Palestine-The Netherlands
71 min.
Abu Laila used to be a judge, but because the government does not have the means to pay him any more he is forced to be a taxi driver. On the day his daughter Laila becomes ten years old, his wife insists that he be home early with a present and cake. Abu Laila has nothing else on his mind than completing this mission, but the daily life in Palestine has other plans.
Courtney Hunt
USA
97 min.
Ray Eddy is about to buy her family the house of her dreams. But when her gamble-loving husband takes off with the money, Ray finds herself alone with her kids and completely broke. Trying to trace her husband down, she meets Lila Littlewolf, a Mohawk girl who provides her with a plan for earning easy money. But the risks are high: smuggling immigrants on the frozen Saint Lawrence, with border patrols on both banks. Desperate for money, Ray accepts the offer: Ray will drive the car and they will share the cash. At first the ice is still thick, but as the deals go on and the Saint Lawrence gets thinner, Ray and Lila will discover that smuggling immigrants comes at a cost.
Michael Winterbottom
UK
90 min.
Following the death of their mother Marianne in a car accident, Kelly, aged 16, and Mary, 10, leave America with their English father, Joe, to live in Genoa for a year. An old friend of Joe?s, Barbara, helps them to find their feet in the city. The father teaches at university while the two girls embark on piano lessons with Mauro at his home in the old town of Genoa, a maze of narrow alleyways in which the girls struggle to find their way. While Kelly discovers the secrets of this mysterious new world and is irritated at having to babysit her younger sister, Mary feels responsible for her mother?s demise and reveals to Barbara that she sometimes sees Marianne.
Benoît Delépine, Gustave Kervern
France
94 min.
A factory somewhere in French Picardy. One morning, the female workers discover that everything has been removed during the night and that the management, accomplices of the swift outsourcing operation, have done a bunk. Shocked but realistic, they decide to pool their absurdly low compensation money in order to finance a redeployment project. They consider several options until Louise, the most radical of them all, proposes, no more no less, that they hire a professional hitman to kill the boss!
Léa Pool
Canada
99 min.
It?s summer, 1966. Time to enjoy summer vacation, total freedom, running wild in the fields, and crazy giggles with friends. But as she becomes more aware of the dreams, sorrows and lies of the people closest to her, Élise sees her mother?s sudden abandonment thoroughly disrupt her family. While her brother Coco stubbornly seeks refuge in constructing a super car, the youngest, Benoît, plummets deep into his own internal world, retreating ever-further into the furnace room. As for her father, he is simply overwhelmed by the situation. Élise decides to take the helm of her drifting family in a poignant attempt to save them. With support from the living and breathing surrounding nature and the silent comfort Monsieur Mouche offers, Élise is on the verge of experiencing a summer unlike any other.
Daniel Burman
Argentina-Spain-France
92 min.
This film explores the emptiness experienced when children grow up and leave the family home, suddenly revealing the cracks in a marriage. Leonardo, a successful if somewhat tedious author, behaves like a man on the verge of a middle-age crisis, indulgent towards his neurosis and phobic towards the changes taking place around him. Unlike his wife, Martha, who launches herself into any activity that will take her mind off things, Leonardo prefers introversion. Only when he accepts his situation, including a son-in-law with his own literary ambitions, a daughter who settles in Israel and a wife with an unexpected enthusiasm for social life, can Leonardo find true happiness.
Yesim Ustaoglu
Turkey-France-Germany-Belgium
112 min.
When three forty-something-year-old siblings in Istanbul receive a call one night that their ageing mother has disappeared from her home on the Western Black Sea Coast of Turkey, the three set out to find her, momentarily setting aside their problems. As the siblings come together, the tensions between them quickly become apparent, like Pandora's box spilling open. They come to realize that they know very little about each other. And even more so, they are forced to reflect on their own shortcomings.
Belén Macías
Spain
99 min.
El patio de mi cárcel is a story about women, about female inmates, excluded from life. It is the story of Isa, a caustic yet generous thief unable to adapt to life outside prison, and her friends. Dolores, a blonde gypsy who killed her husband; Rosa, a tender fragile prostitute; Ajo, in love with Pilar, who lives her love to unbearable limits; Luisa, a naive Colombian surprised by an environment she doesn?t understand... The arrival of Mar, a prison worker who doesn?t adjust to the rules of the institution, embarks the women on a journey towards freedom. With the help of Adela, the prison director, they create Módulo 4, the theatre group that will provide them with the energy they need to cope with life?s hard knocks.
Jaime Rosales
Spain
85 min.
Ion is apparently a normal guy. He gets up in the morning, has breakfast, sorts his things, meets his lawyers. One night he meets a girl at a party. They spend the night together at her flat. His life follows its course uneventfully. A phone call in a phone box; a meeting with a friend; small, unimportant everyday situations. One day he gets into a car with another two people. They drive across the border to France. They spend the night at a couple?s house. The next morning, after a chance meeting in a roadside cafe, they kill two civil guards in plain clothes.
Mark Herman
UK - USA
95 min.
Set in 1942 Berlin, nine-year-old Bruno knows nothing about the meaning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. He is totally unaware of the terrible cruelty his country is inflicting on the people of Europe. All he knows is that his father has been promoted and the family sent from a comfortable house in Berlin to an isolated area where there?s not much to do and nobody to play with. But everything changes when he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the fence, where everyone wears the same ?striped pyjamas? uniform. The friendship between Bruno and Shmuel will mark the end of their childhood innocence.
Not in competition
Ben Stiller
USA
107 min.
An action comedy about a group of self-absorbed actors who set out to make the most expensive war film ever. After ballooning costs (and the spoiled actors? outsized egos) force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading the cast into the jungles of Southest Asia to make the film ?more realistic?; but there they run into the real bad guys.
Not in competition
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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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