Aaron Sorkin, Francisco Ramos, Ted Hope and Marc Orts will be the leading figures of the Conversations and Master classes on Thought and Discussion, San Sebastian Festival’s new area, encompassing all of the activities that underscore its character as a place for meeting and transferring knowledge. The Thought and Discussion programme, which promotes discussion on the cinema from the industrial, creative and educational points of view, is rounded off by the European Film Forum and the round table Creating audiences beyond Europe. All of the activities will be broadcast in streaming mode on sansebastianfestival.com

Academy-Award® winning screenwriter, playwright, producer and director Aaron Sorkin made his feature film debut with his adaptation of his own play A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992). He followed this success with The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010), for which he won the Academy Award® for best adapted screenplay, Moneyball (2012)  and Steve Jobs (2015) which garnered him a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. For television, Sorkin created and produced The West Wing (1999-2006), which has won a total of twenty-six Primetime Emmy Awards as well as producing and writing the television series Sports Night  (1998-2000) and The Newsroom (2012-2014). His masterclass at San Sebastian coincides with the Netflix premiere in October this year of his upcoming film, The Trial of the Chicago 7. Written and directed by Sorkin, the film is based on the landmark federal prosecution of seven anti-war demonstrators around the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The Mexican producer Francisco Ramos, Vice-President of Spanish-Language Originals for Netflix in Latin America, will talk with two producers about the challenges and opportunities of platforms for the independent production sector and the audiovisual industry in general. Until joining Netflix in 2017, he had developed his professional career in Spain where, having worked for the distributor Aurum Producciones, he began his career as an independent producer. From 2009 to 2017 he produced for Grupo Zeta’s audiovisual arm and over the course of his career he has produced more than 50 films and television shows. With the collaboration of Europa Creativa Media Desk Euskadi. 

Ted Hope, nominated for the Academy Award® 12 times, began his career in the 90s and was a leading light in the boom experienced by indie movies during that decade, producing directors including Ang Lee, Todd Solondz, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Michel Gondry. He later joined Amazon Studios, where he participated in the production, launch and distribution of films such as The Aeronauts (Tom Harper, 2019) and Troop Zero (Bert Bertie, 2019), Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016), Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018) and The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016), among others. His master class coincides with his return to independent production and the revised edition of his book Hope for Film. With the collaboration of Creative Europe MEDIA and Management of Cultural Industry, Intellectual Property and Cooperation (ICC).

Marc Orts, who is currently head and creative director of sound at Deluxe, has won the Goya Award for Best Sound five times and has worked for directors such as J.A. Bayona, Pedro Almodóvar, Daniel Monzón or Jaume Balagueró. He participated in the creation of Immsound, the precursor of Dolby Atmos, which was absorbed by Dolby. His master class, entitled “Audiovisual sound: from its origins until Full Immersive”, will look at the evolution of sound technology and the process of creating a soundtrack depending on its reproduction format. He is also a professor at the ESCAC and the ECAM and is a member of the Hollywood Film Academy. The master class given by Marc Orts is part of the Zinemaldia & Technology initiative, which has the backing of Creative Europe Media.  

Creative Europe Media is also the promoter of the European Film Forum which, as announced, will take place on Tuesday September 22 from 15:00 to 16:45 and will reflect on the challenges and opportunities facing the European audiovisual industry in the crisis triggered by Covid-19. 

Finally, on Tuesday 22, from 12h to 13h15, there will be a round table with the participation of the MEDIA Desks of Europa Creativa from Catalonia, Andalusia, Euskadi and Spain, aimed at professionals who are starting up in the audiovisual sector with projects with international projection. The MEDIA Programme will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2021 and is willing to share the accumulated know-how during its almost three decades of existence.