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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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The debuts of an Iranian director and a British filmmaker and the second feature from an Indian filmmaker join the New Directors section at the 65th edition of the San Sebastian Festival. Finally, sixteen films will compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award.
The world premiere of ‘Charmøren / The Charmer’ to open the New Directors section. Milad Alami (Teheran, 1982) was born in Iran, grew up in Sweden and now lives in Denmark. His short films have been selected for the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and Clermont-Ferrand. The latest, Mommy (2015), won the Danish Academy for best film. Charmøren /The Charmer, his first feature, stars a young Iranian desperately trying to meet women who can secure his stay in Denmark.
Coming from the field of Fine Arts, Daniel Kokotajlo (Manchester, UK), is a self-taught writer and director. He is the only filmmaker to have been selected twice for the iFeatures project development programme, with The Prefect in 2012 and Apostasy in 2015. His first feature film, Apostasy, follows a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Village Rockstars is the second feature from the film writer, producer and director Rima Das (Assam, India). Das wrote and helmed the feature Man with the Binoculars: Antardrishti (2016), a contender at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and participant in the Indian Story section of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. Village Rockstars stars a 10 year-old girl desperate to own a guitar.
These three films join the list of thirteen productions already announced from Argentina, Belgium, Colombia, Chile, China, France, the Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan, and will compete for the New Directors-Kutxabank Award. The accolade, to be decided by an international jury, comes with 50,000 euros for the director and distributor of the film in Spain. The films in this section are also candidates for the EROSKI Youth Award, voted by a jury of a maximum of 300 students between the ages of 18 and 25 years.
Charmøren / The Charmer is an intense psychological drama about Esmail, a young Iranian man who is desperately trying to meet women who can secure his stay in Denmark. As time runs out, he falls in love and his past catches up with him. The film deals with themes of race, class, and the struggle for a better life.
As devout Jehovah's Witnesses, sisters Alex and Luisa and their mother, Ivanna, are united in The Truth. Alex looks up to her confident older sister, while striving to follow in Ivanna's footsteps as a 'good Witness'. But when Luisa starts to question the advice of the Elders, she makes a life-altering transgression that threatens to expel her from the congregation. Unless Ivanna and Alex can persuade her to return, they must shun her completely. This challenge becomes more painful when their family is faced with another heartbreaking test of faith. Written and directed by Daniel Kokotajlo, a former Jehovah's Witness, Apostasy provides rare insight into the complex nature of faith, family, duty and love.
Ten year-old Dhunu lives in a remote village in Assam, India, amidst raging deprivation. She is a free spirit, while her widowed mother struggles daily to put food on the table and raise her children. But this doesn't prevent her from having dreams, like owning a guitar for the tiny band she wants to put together with some local boys, the 'Village Rockstars'. Dhunu considers herself to be as capable as guys her age. When the boys eventually relinquish their dream, Dhunu refuses to give up on her ambition to own a guitar.
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