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
Films
Pearls
Pearls
Zeresnay Berhane Mehari
USA
99 min.
Produced by Angelina Jolie, this film won the Audience Award at the Sundance Festival and the Audience Award of the Panorama Section at the Berlinale. In Addis Ababa, lawyer Meaza Ashenafi has created a network providing support to poor women and children in need of legal aid. She is constantly harassed by the police and the authorities. Even so, she is bold enough to defend Hirut, a 14 year-old girl kidnapped and raped on her way home from school, who shoots her captors and escapes. Despite having acted in self-defence, Hirut may be sentenced to death.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Turkey - Germany - France
196 min.
Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bulge Ceylan won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival with this film, the tale of Aydin, a former actor, who runs a small hotel in central Anatolia helped by his young wife Nihal and his sister Necla. As winter progresses, the hotel becomes not only a refuge, but a place with no escape that fuels the bitterness.
Ira Sachs
USA
100 min.
Presented at the Sundance and Berlin festivals, starring John Lithgow, Alfred Molina and Marisa Tomei. After 39 years together, Ben and George take advantage of New York's new same-sex marriage laws and tie the knot. Shortly afterwards, George gets fired with no explanation from his longtime job as a choir director for a Catholic school and they lose their apartment. The couple are forced to split up and stay with friends.
Laurent Cantet
France
95 min.
A terrace overlooking Havana, the sunset. Five friends gather to celebrate the return of Amadeo after 16 years of exile. From dusk to dawn, they reminisce about their youth, the group they used to form, the faith they had in the future... but also their disillusionment. A film by Laurent Cantet selected for the Venice Days section at the Venice Festival.
Daniel Wolfe
United Kingdom
111 min.
The first film by Daniel Wolfe was presented in the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Festival. In a closed community, freedom comes at a price. Dishonour your family? Pay with your life. On the run from bounty hunters who will stop at nothing to capture them, Leila and Aaron soon find themselves propelled towards a dramatic showdown.
Closing Film
Andrea Di Stefano
France - Spain - Belgium
119 min.
Young surfer Nick goes to visit his brother in Colombia and he falls madly in love with a beautiful girl called Maria. It all seems perfect until he meets her uncle, one Pablo Escobar.
Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard
UK
97 min.
Winner of the Best Directing Award for World Cinema Documentary at the Sundance Festival, here drama and reality combine in a fictitious 24 hours in the life of musician and international cultural icon Nick Cave. With startlingly frank insights and an intimate portrayal of the artistic process, the film examines what makes us who we are, and celebrates the transformative power of the creative spirit.
Yinan Diao
China
106 min.
The winning film of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival was this Chinese production directed by Yinan Diao. A coal mine worker is murdered and his mutilated body found hundreds of kilometres away. The investigation follows the trail of several suspects, but two officers die in the attempt to capture them and another is badly injured. Zhang Zili is forced to withdraw from the case and takes the job of security guard at a factory. Five years later the murders start again and Zhang Zili realises that all of the victims are related to a woman he finds himself falling in love with.
Céline Sciamma
France
112 min.
Céline Sciamma (Tomboy) presented this film at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes. Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of 3 free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.
Diego Luna
Mexico - USA
98 min.
From acclaimed director Diego Luna, a film which journeys from the struggles, resistance, and ultimate triumph faced by César Chávez to a personal view of the family man who risked his life for what he believed in, inspiring thousands of people along the way. César E. Chávez was a legendary figure in the 1960’s civil rights movement who fought for millions of American workers’ rights by staging the largest non-violent protest in United States history. Having been a farm worker himself, enduring the inhumane conditions suffered in the fields in exchange for minimal pay, he dedicated his life to providing a better future for the oppressed.
Mathieu Amalric
France
76 min.
Mathieu Amalric directs and stars in this adaptation of a novel by Georges Simenon presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Festival. A man and a woman, secretly in love, alone in a room. They desire each other, want each other, even bite each other. In the afterglow, they share a few sweet nothings. The man at least seems to believe they were nothing. Now under investigation by the police and the courts, Julien fails to find the words. "Life is different when you live it and when you go back over it after." What happened? What is he accused of?
Ned Benson
USA
122 min.
James McAvoy (Last King of Scotland, X-Men) and Jessica Chastain (two-time Academy Award nominee for Zero Dark Thirty and The Help) revolves around the tale of a couple's struggle to get back on track. Eleanor and Conor are a couple admired by all. They seem to be very much in love, but one day a stroke of fate knocks the wind out of their marriage. The New York pair must try to understand one another as they cope with their grief while trying to resucitate their love and recover their life. The cast has the participation of Viola Davis, Bill Hader, William Hurt and Isabelle Huppert. Presented in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Festival.
Naomi Kawase
Japan - France - Spain
119 min.
A co-production between Japan, France and the Spanish production company Eddie Saeta directed by Naomi Kawase, which competed in the last edition of the Cannes Festival. On the subtropical Japanese island of Amami-Oshima, 16-year-old Kaito discovers a dead body floating in the sea. His girlfriend Kyoko will attempt to help him understand this mysterious discovery. Together, they will learn to become adults.
Shlomi Elkabetz, Ronit Elkabetz
Israel - France - Germany
115 min.
Civil marriages don't exist in Israel; only religious law is legitimate, under which divorce is only possible with the husband's full consent. A film about a woman's struggle to obtain what she considers to be a right. Presented at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes.
Isao Takahata
Japan
137 min.
The latest work from the Japanese master of animation, Isao Takahata, was released at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, an adaptation of a classic work from Japanese literature. Found inside a shining stalk of bamboo, a tiny girl grows into an exquisite young lady raised by an old bamboo cutter and his wife. From the countryside to the grand capital city, she enthralls all who encounter her, including five noble suitors. Ultimately she must face her fate.
Xavier Dolan
Canada
134 min.
Xavier Dolan, one of filmmaking's surprises in recent years, won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival with his new movie. A widow must raise her 15 year-old son with ADHD single-handed. Mother and son try hard to adapt and get by as best they can in their forced existence together. The arrival of a new neighbour in the shape of Kyla will mark their lives.
Abel Ferrara
France - Italy - Belgium
87 min.
In a film dreamlike and visionary, a blend of reality and imagination, Abel Ferrara reconstructs the last day in the life of Pier Paolo Pasolini with frequent collaborator Willem Dafoe as the great poet and filmmaker. One day, one life. Rome, the night of November 2nd 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini is murdered. Pasolini is the symbol of an art that's fighting against the power. His writings are scandalous, his films are persecuted by the censors, many people love him and many hate him. The day of his death, Pasolini spends his last hours with his beloved mother and later on with his dearest friends, and finally goes out into the night in his Alfa Romeo in search of adventure in the eternal city. Dawn, Pasolini is found dead on a beach in Ostia on the outskirts of the city. The film will compete at the forthcoming Venice Film Festival.
Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
Ukraine
132 min.
Winning film of the Critics' Week at the last Cannes Festival. A deaf mute teenager enters a specialized boarding school where, to survive, he becomes part of a wild organization, the Tribe. His love for one of the Chief's concubines will unwillingly lead him to break all the unwritten rules within the Tribe’s hierarchy.
Damián Szifrón
Argentina - Spain
121 min.
A Spanish/Argentinian co-production with participation by the Spanish production company, El Deseo, premiered in the Official Selection in the last edition of Cannes Festival. The inequality, injustice and demands of the world we live in cause many people to suffer from stress or depression. Some explode. This is a film about them.
Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
© Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
France
109 min.
This latest documentary by Wim Wenders won the Un Certain Regard Special Prize at the Cannes Festival. For the last 40 years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed some of the major events of our recent history; international conflicts, starvation and exodus. He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of wild fauna and flora, and of grandiose landscapes as part of a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet’s beauty. Sebastião Salgado’s life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last travels, and by Wim Wenders, himself a photographer.
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