The film projects of Eduardo Crespo, Mina Fitzpatrick, Manuel Muñoz Rivas, Magdalena Orellana and Marina Palacio have been chosen from among the 409 projects registered for the seventh edition of Ikusmira Berriak, 220% more than last year (185). Ikusmira Berriak is the residency and audiovisual project development programme organised by the San Sebastian Film Festival, the Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture and the Elías Querejeta ZineEskola (EQZE) film school.
BAC: Y así seguirán las cosas (And so things will go on), Marina Palacio.
The director, screenwriter and director of photography Eduardo Crespo (Crespo, Argentina, 1983), who has been selected in the international category, competed in the Official Section of the last edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival with the film Nosotros nunca moriremos. Marina Palacio (San Sebastian, 1996), a student from the first promotion of EQZE, chosen in the category of creators from the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), was also part of the programme of the 68th edition of the Festival, in her case in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section, with the short film Ya no duermo. Magdalena Orellana (Buenos Aires, 1990) will be the representative of the second promotion of EQZE, after presenting her work in spaces such as The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Cineteca, MediaLab Prado, BilbaoArte, CCCB and the Sala de Arte Joven of the Community of Madrid. In the national category, the selection committee has selected Manuel Muñoz Rivas (Seville, 1978), who in 2017 premiered his first feature film, El mar nos mira de lejos, at the Berlinale. In the Nest category is Mina Fitzpatrick (United States, 1989), who participated in 2017 in the international meeting of film students in San Sebastian with a short film with the same title as the project that she will work on in Ikusmira Berriak, which will involve turning it into a feature film.
The selection committee made up of representatives from the Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture, the San Sebastian Film Festival and EQZE has chosen projects on topics as varied as the backgrounds of their film-makers: a reunion between a father and a daughter in the caves of Tuscany in Italy (La gruta del viento); a fantasy in the form of an expedition to investigate the mysteries of the North Pole (Hasta que el lugar se haga improbable); the portrait of a young man accused of parricide who attempts to find his place amid the violence and strangeness of the Texas desert (Wandervogel); the last trip of an elderly married couple to the source of the Guadalquivir river in the Sierra de Cazorla (Manantial); and the passage from adolescence to childhood – time moving backwards – of a group of friends from a town in Palencia (Y así seguirán las cosas).
The residency period will be eight weeks. If the state of the pandemic makes this possible and it is allowed by the health authorities, the five film-makers will arrive in Tabakalera on 15 March, where they will have until 25 April to work on their projects. In September, coinciding with the celebration of the Festival, they will return to San Sebastian to complete the last two weeks of the residency, with the project at a more advanced stage, in order to share it with the film industry. During this phase they will be prepared for the pitching session, with a view to holding meetings with professionals from the industry present at the Festival. Each project will have a development grant of 5,000 euros that will be handed over in June, so that they can continue working on their project between the two stays of the residency. In addition, the production company Irusoin will present the ‘Irusoin Award for Post-Production’ to one of the selected projects. The award consists of carrying out the post-production of sound, colour and graphic works and obtaining a DCP master.
Despite the difficulties they have faced due to Covid-19, the five projects selected in the 2020 edition of Ikusmira Berriak have good prospects. La misteriosa mirada del flamenco by Diego Céspedes and produced by Giancarlo Nasi (Quijote Films) won the TorinoFilmLab TFL Production Award (funded by Creative Europe Media), worth 50,000 euros. Anoche conquisté Tebas by Gabriel Azorín (member of the first promotion of EQZE) and produced by Carlos Prado (Dvein Films) won the RTP Award at the Seville Festival Co-productions Forum (10,000 euros). Monólogo Colectivo by Jessica Sarah Rinland has been supported by the Rotterdam Festival Hubert Bals Fund (HBF). O corno do centeo, by Jaione Camborda (Esnatu Zinema), has obtained a co-production agreement with Andrea Vázquez of Miramemira (O que arde) and a grant of 249,000 euros from AGADIC (aid from the Regional Government of Galicia). Finally, Creatura, by Elena Martín Gimeno (Vilaüt Films S.L.), will be a co-production by Lastor Media and Avalon.
From the 2018 and 2019 editions: 918 gau, by Arantza Santesteban (Txintxua Films/Hiruki Filmak) participated in the San Sebastian Film Festival’s WIP Europa and All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, by Raven Jackson, in the Tribeca Film Institute Network and Film Independent Producing Lab.
Different sections of the last edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival have also hosted works produced in the Ikusmira Berriak residencies. These include Chupacabra, by Grigory Kolomytsev (New Directors), Stephanie, by Leonardo Van Dijl (Zabaltegi-Tabakalera), and Jo ta ke, by Aitziber Olaskoaga (Zinemira). In addition, several projects that have participated in Ikusmira Berriak in recent years have a good perspective for 2021: Pornomelancolía, by Manuel Abramovich, and Eles transportan a morte, by Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado.
The Ikusmira Berriak programme is part of the legacy of San Sebastian 2016 European Capital of Culture.
The magnetic north pole is moving away from its usual axis and no one in the scientific community can explain why. As if confronted with a strange artifice, the characters in this film will experience a series of fortuitous events under the effects of a mysterious force that seems to deprive them of everything they had ever learned. Eighty-three holidaymakers will have a communal siesta under a sky that will reflect a spectrum of unrecognisable colours. Someday they will either wake up or they will not. Both options seem reasonable.
Horacio is a vet who has emigrated to Italy from Argentina a few years earlier. He lives with his daughter Mara, an introverted young woman who has a passion for potholing. They go on a trip separately but one that finds them both in the middle of the mountain, to talk about all those things that they have never talked about. La gruta del viento is a film about an early farewell; the daily rites that we perform while life goes by; close ties, identity, the force of nature and emotions.
After undergoing complex neurosurgery and a long hospital stay, an elderly man, now partially rehabilitated, goes on a weekend excursion with his wife. Together they travel by car from the mouth of a river to the mountains, where they continue on foot, in search of the remote source of the river. The route is confusing and will test both their physical and moral stamina. When they finally near the spring, they are surprised by nightfall before they can see it with their own eyes.
Estrella Vista is a small ranch hidden deep in the Chihuahuan Desert, a place where young parricides - youth accused of killing their parents - find refuge after being released from prison. Dan Dailey (68) and Derek King (28) live together in the open expanse of the West Texas desert. When Dan dies of a heart attack, Derek finds himself adrift and under the suspicion of the authorities in town. Wandervogel is a hybrid documentary that investigates the life of Dan Dailey while reconstructing the elusive father figure of Derek’s imagination. Using Dan’s blog, The "Wandervogel Diary", Derek and the film crew investigate the possibility of a filmic reincarnation.
Y así seguirán las cosas is a project that hovers between fiction and reality. The aim is to complete it over 5 years, in a filming process that will remain open to the lives of its protagonists: a group of children who will live and stop living in a small town in Tierra de Campos. All of their lives will change and the film will change with them.