This year the San Sebastian Festival addresses a new anniversary (65 years have gone by since its first edition), but it has no intention of engaging in nostalgia or of secreting itself away in the past. Quite the opposite; although it will never forget the rich legacy of the past, this new edition has its eyes firmly fixed on the present. The selection of titles making up the programme of a film festival is, in the enlightened words of Thierry Frémaux, General Manager of the Cannes Festival, in his book, Selection officielle: Journal, “a journey, a snapshot of the state of cinema which must be shown with no filter to those who will gauge its quality”. This portrait of today’s cinematic experiences is clearly outlined in the different names making up the Official Selection of this edition, as widely varied in styles and subjects as they are consistent when proposing that X-ray of the world and the human condition, that resistance to hegemonic thinking which must be the ultimate goal of all good cinema.

A series of filmmakers with an already solid background come together this year in San Sebastian: Barbara Albert, Urszula Antoniak, Alexandros Avranas, Anahí Berneri, Albert Dupontel, Emmanuel Finkiel, James Franco, Yves Hinant and Jean Libon, Diego Lerman, Manuel Martín Cuenca, Antonio Méndez Esparza, Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, Constantin Popescu, Matt Porterfield, Alberto Rodríguez, Björn Runge, Robert Schwentke, Nobuhiro Suwa and Wim Wenders. We will also see the return of directors who bring their new works and whose careers are closely linked to the San Sebastian Festival, such as Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño or Fernando Franco, or the coming-out of new promises who will present their first works, like Ivana Mladenovic or Sergio G. Sánchez. Such is the wealth of today’s cinema that this mosaic also has a place for the non-fiction films of Jean-Michel Cousteau and Jean-Jacques Mantello or for the work of two anime artists, Akiyuki Shinbo and Nobuyuki Takeuchi.

Looking towards the future while remaining firmly grounded in today’s world has always been the objective of the San Sebastian Festival too in its other sections. Horizontes Latinos takes the pulse of the Latin American cinema of the year, revealing its enviable health, while Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, with its surprising selection of feature films, shorts, TV series and experimental works establishes a dialogue between the heterodox veterans of cinematic practice and the new promises looking to follow less trodden paths. And what better commitment to the future than the titles making up the New Directors programme, a catalogue of first and second works constituting excellent letters of introduction?

A film festival’s work must always extend beyond that intense week-long movie get-together; it must be a test ground and experiment lab which remains active throughout the year and supports local and international film creation. That’s why the Festival has launched initiatives like the Ikusmira Berriak programme to develop audiovisual projects committed to innovation and experimentation by means of a residency for creators and aid for production and post-production; or its active collaboration in the setting in motion of the new Elías Querejeta Film School, an initiative headed by the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and on which it strides along with the Filmoteca Vasca and Tabakalera-International Centre for Contemporary Culture.

The Festival’s backing of film production also comes to fruition in its Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, or in its Films in Progress programme (now in its 32nd edition), intended to help Latin American films at the post-production stage. On the other hand, this edition sees the early steps of the new Glocal in Progress programme, created to promote the production of European films shot in non-hegemonic languages and in so doing to enable cinema as a tool for the dissemination of linguistic and cultural diversity. This should be the aim of today’s cinema and of festivals like this one that try to lend it visibility: to find all the things that bring us together thanks, precisely, to their difference.