The San Sebastian City Council has consolidated its support for the San Sebastian Festival as the sponsor of the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award. This will be the fifth consecutive year that this initiative has been carried out as part of the legacy of San Sebastián 2016, European Capital of Culture, and it is also intended as a tribute from the City Council to the citizens, who are the ones who will deliver the award through their vote.
The City of Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award goes to Perlak’s films It’s a section made up of titles that have been awarded or acclaimed at other international festivals. The screenings will take place at the Victoria Eugenia Theatre and the audience attending the first screening of each film will be able to vote to choose the winner. The award will be presented at the Festival closing gala.
The City of Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award are two different accolades: a Best Film Award, coming with 50,000 euros, and a Best European Film Award of 20,000 euros. Thanks to this award, the two winning films will be forever connected to the city.
Last year the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award for Best Film went to Hors normes / The Specials by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, and the Best European Film Award went to Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You.
Also, the City Council and the Festival will allocate a number of tickets to the Department of Social Action for distribution among people with economic difficulties. In this edition, and due to the reduction of the capacity and the number of tickets, both parties have agreed to distribute through the municipal services of Social Action a number of tickets –still to be determined– among those groups with greater economic needs.
Neige, a divorced mother of three, regularly visits her Algerian grandfather in the nursing home where he lives. She loves and respects this pillar of the family who raised her and above all protected her from toxic parents. Relationships between the various family members are difficult, and rife with bitterness and resentment... Luckily Neige can count on the good-humoured support of her ex, François. The death of the grandfather unleashes a family storm and triggers a profound identity crisis in Neige. From now on, she will want to know and understand her DNA.
Rómulo is a private eye. When he’s hired to investigate the home for the elderly of which his mother is a resident, Rómulo decides to train Sergio (83 years of age), who has never worked as a detective, to live in the home for a while as an undercover agent. Once infiltrated, finding it seriously difficult to assume his role as a mole and hide his adorable and affectionate personality, he gradually becomes, more than a spy, an ally for his endearing companions. Premiered in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance Festival. EFADs-CAACI Award at the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum in 2017.
On the surface of it, Sandra is a young mum struggling to provide her two young daughters with a warm, safe, happy home to grow up in. Determined to change their lives for the better, and when it becomes clear that the authorities aren't going to help, she decides to build it herself from scratch. With very little income to speak of and no savings, Sandra must use all her ingenuity to make her ambitious dream a reality. At the same time, she must escape the grip of her possessive ex-husband and keep him away from her and her girls. But nothing intimidates Sandra, who draws together a community of friends willing to support her and lend a helping hand. Thanks to the kindness and generosity of these people, and the love of her two daughters, Sandra will recover her sense of self.
Bright, intelligent, passionate and free, Eleanor is Karl Marx's youngest daughter. Among the first women to link the themes of feminism and socialism, she takes part in the workers' battles and fights for women's rights and the abolition of child labour. In 1883 she meets Edward Aveling and her life is crushed by their passionate but tragic love story.
Okju and Dongju move into their grandpa's house during their summer vacation after their father goes broke. While young Dongju adapts well to his new home, Okju rather feels awkward in this new environment. Shortly afterwards, their soon-to-be-divorced aunt also moves in, and Okju finds that the more time she spends with her family, the more the house and her grandpa start to grow on her. However, when her grandpa falls ill, her father and aunt decide to send him to the sanatorium and to sell the house.
Aged 17, Autumn looks at herself in the mirror and realises her body is changing. Worried, she goes to a crisis centre for young women where her worst fear is confirmed: she’s pregnant. Neither the local services nor the leaflets given to her at the health centre – designed to encourage young girls to give up their new-born babies in adoption – answer her questions. Not only that, but being underage, the state she lives in demands her parents’ permission before they can give her a legal abortion. Desperate, her only options are the alternative methods to which women have always turned. Despite Autumn telling nobody about her problem, her cousin and best friend Skylar, who sees her every day at college and in the shop where they work as checkout operators, soon understands her situation, offering her immediate and unconditional support. With the address of a Brooklyn clinic in her pocket, the cousins take an early-morning bus to New York.
Following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. The film features real nomads Linda May, Swankie and Bob Wells as Fern’s mentors and comrades in her exploration through the vast landscape of the American West
Anthony, a man of almost 80 years of age, lives alone in his London flat and refuses each of the nurses his daughter Anne tries to impose on him. But the need is increasingly pressing for her as she has decided to move to Paris and live with a man she has just met. It soon becomes obvious that Anthony’s perception of reality is growing more confused.
In upstate New York in the 1850s, Abigail begins a new year on the rural farm where she lives with her husband Dyer. As Abigail considers the year to come through her journal entries, we experience the marked contrast between her deliberate, stoic manner and her unravelling complex emotions. Spring arrives and Abigail meets Tallie, an emotionally frank and arrestingly beautiful newcomer renting a neighbouring farm with her husband, Finney. The two strike up a tentative relationship, filling a void in their lives which neither knew existed.
Japan, 1940. The night before the outbreak of World War II, local merchant Yusaku Fukuhara senses that things are moving in a disturbing direction. He leaves his wife Satoko at home and travels to Manchuria with his nephew. There, Yusaku is the chance witness of a barbaric act and decides to take steps to reveal it to the world. After an initial misunderstanding, his wife, when she discovers her husband’s true intentions, will do the unthinkable to guarantee his well-being and his happiness.