Eight titles at the 65th edition of the San Sebastian Festival will compete for the Cooperación Española Award, an accolade devised to acknowledge the producer of the Ibero-American film that best contributes to human development, the eradication of poverty and the full exercise of human rights.
This is the third edition of the award, result of the collaboration between the San Sebastian Festival and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation Development (AECID). The Award, which has contenders from the Official Selection, New Directors and Horizontes Latinos, and which comes with 10,000 euros, will be presented at the Festival closing gala.
As well as jointly promoting this award, the AECID and the San Sebastian International Film Festival also work in coordination with other initiatives, with the aim of fostering the presence of women and new talents in the Ibero-American audiovisual industry.
Jury
The Cooperación Española Award will have a jury made up of:
Films competing for the Cooperación Española Award
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Alanis works as a prostitute. She has a baby and, with her friend Gisela, shares the flat in which she lives and attends to her clients, until two municipal inspectors close down her home and arrest Gisela, accused of procurement. Let down by everybody, Alanis heads for her aunt’s place, across from the Plaza Miserere. From this mixed race and violent neighbourhood, Alanis struggles to recover her dignity, help her friend and take care of her son. She offers her services in the street, but even that has its own rules and Alanis must fight for her place.
Malena is a middle-class doctor in Buenos Aires. One afternoon she receives a call from Dr Costas, telling her she must leave immediately for the north of the country: the baby she was expecting is about to be born. Suddenly and almost without a thought, Malena decides to set out on an uncertain voyage, packed with crossroads at which she has to deal with all sorts of legal and moral obstacles to the extent that she constantly asks herself to what limits she is prepared to go to get the thing she wants most.
NEW DIRECTORS
Paula, a 22 year-old student, witnesses the murder of her beloved father, a popular political sciences professor at a public university in Medellin. From the distance, she catches a glimpse of the murderer as he beats a hasty retreat on a motorcycle. Devastated by the pain of their loss, Paula and her family will have to deal with official lethargy. The authorities will make no effort to clarify the events and the case is soon archived and abandoned. When Christmas comes round, a couple of months after the murder, Paula accidentally bumps into Jesús, the young man who killed her father. So what happens when revenge becomes a real possibility? Paula decides to approach the man, initially motivated by an almost primitive instinct to get answers and eventually to find the courage to cross the moral and ethical line of killing a man, thereby avenging her father’s death.
In a far-off country at the end of the world Tamara, aged 12, lives under the wing of charismatic cult leader Miguel, a man she adores. That summer the girl will be given a mission: to have a holy child with him immediately she has her first period. Tamara realises that the life she wants for herself is not the same as the fate imposed on her. Her disobedience will lead to her violent development from child to woman, forcing her to gain her freedom in a way she had never imagined.
HORIZONTES LATINOS
Marina is a young waitress and wannabe singer; Orlando owns a printing company. Together they plan their future. When Orlando dies suddenly, Marina has to stand up to his family and society to show them what she truly is: a complex, strong, forthright and... fantastic woman.
Bolting from his first ever heist, Reynaldo Galíndez, alias 'Rey', lands in the patio of the house inhabited by Carlos Vargas, a retired security guard. Vargas offers a deal: the young boy will repair the damage to his home in return for not being handed over to the police. The lessons given to the teenager by the former guard develop into a relationship not unlike the old legends of educating a king (for the “Rey” of his name, meaning “king”). But the agreement will start to fall apart when the loose ends of the robbery Reynaldo had been involved in start closing in around them. Films in Progress Industry Award and CAACI / Ibermedia TV Films in Progress Award in 2016.
Twelve year-old Pedro roams the streets with his friends in the violent urban atmosphere of a working-class district of Caracas. When Pedro seriously injures another boy in a fight, his single father, Andrés, decides that they must make a run for it and hide. Although Andrés will realise that as a father he is incapable of controlling his son, the situation will bring them closer than they have ever been.
Mariana (42) belongs to the Chilean upper class; she spends her days managing an art gallery and learning how to ride a horse. Her riding instructor, Juan, 20 years her senior, is an ex-cavalry officer known as El Coronel, under investigation for human rights abuses committed during the Chilean dictatorship. When Mariana embarks on a romance with her mysterious teacher, she finds herself caught up in a complex situation from which she is loathe to escape on discovering her father’s close relationship with the man being investigated.