A total of six productions programmed at San Sebastian Festival’s 68th edition will compete for the XXI Sebastiane Award given by GEHITU, the Basque Association of Gays, Lesbians, Transsexuals and Bisexuals, to the film that best reflects the realities, freedoms and social progress of the LGBTI collective.
Said award, which will be presented in its twenty-first edition on September 25, will be chosen from among six candidates: Été 85 / Summer of 85 (François Ozon) and Supernova (Harry Macqueen), from the Official Selection; Falling (Viggo Mortensen), from the Donostia Award screening; Las mil y una / One in a Thousand (Clarisa Navas), from Horizontes Latinos; Rizi / Days (Tsai Ming-Liang), from Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, and The World to Come (Mona Fastvold), from Perlak.
In addition, GEHITU wishes to highlight in this edition, three titles out of competition: the series Patria (Aitor Gabilondo) and We Are Who We Are (Luca Guadagnino), included as Special Screenings in the Official Selection, and Dustin (Naïla Guiguet), a short film from Zabaltegi-Tabakalera.
On the other hand, on Wednesday, September 23, GEHITU will make the most of the first screening of Las mil y una / One in a Thousand (Clarisa Navas) in Horizontes Latinos to present those responsible for the movie with the Sebastiane Latino 2020 Award for best Latin American film of the year on an LGBTI subject.
Finally, GEHITU and the Sebastiane Award jury announce that the VI Meeting of Ibero-American LGBTI Film Festivals will take place on September 23, without physical attendance, in view of the situation generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. As highlighted by the association, the San Sebastian Festival’s backing of the meeting and of the Sebastiane Awards “represents another contribution, from culture, to preventing a backwards movement in the aspects that make our societies more egalitarian and free”.
Alexis, almost 16, is on the point of drowning when his boat capsizes off the coast of Normandy. Luckily, 18-year-old David heroically saves him. Alexis has just met the friend of his dreams. But will the dream last for more than one summer? The summer of 85.
Sam and Tusker have spent twenty years together, and they are as passionately in love as they have ever been. But in the two years since Tusker was diagnosed with young-onset dementia, their lives have had to change. As autumn comes, they plan a road trip while Tusker is still able to travel, to reconnect with friends and family and visit the places of their past. As their trip together progresses, their individual ideas for their future begin to collide. Secrets are uncovered, private plans unravel, and their love for each other is tested like never before.
John Petersen lives with his partner, Eric, and their adopted daughter, Monica, in California. John’s father, Willis, a traditional and conservative man, decides to travel to Los Angeles and stay with John while looking for the ideal place to retire. During his stay at the house, the worlds of father and son clash strongly, reopening old wounds and creating new ones on the mutual journey to acceptance and forgiveness.
When Iris meets Renata, a young woman with a tough past, she feels immediately attracted to her. She will have to overcome her fears and struggle with her insecurities in order to experience first love. A story full of tenderness in a very hostile environment where desire adapts many forms in the darkness, and gossip can turn into a dangerous weapon. Project presented at the Co-production Forum in 2018.
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.
Beset by the pain of illness and treatment, Kang finds himself living the life of a drifter. He meets Non in a foreign land. They find consolation in each other before parting ways and carrying on with their days.
In an abandoned warehouse, a crowd is dancing as one to 145 BPM techno music. Among them is Dustin, a young transgender and crew: Felix, Raya and Juan. As the night draws on, collective hysteria morphs into sweet melancholy, and euphoria into yearning for tenderness.
The day ETA announces its plan to give up weapons, Bittori heads for the cemetery to tell the tomb of her husband, El Txato, murdered by the terrorists, that she has decided to return to the village where they had lived their whole lives. Can she live alongside those who hounded her before and after the attack that shattered her life, and that of her family? Can she discover the identity of the hooded man who killed her husband as he headed for his transport company? Bittori’s presence disturbs the village’s false appearance of tranquillity, and above all that of her neighbour Miren, a close friend in other times, and the mother of Joxe Mari, a jailed terrorist. What happened between these two women? What poisoned the lives of their children and their husbands, so close to one another in the past? With their hidden torments and their unshakeable convictions, with their wounds and their bravery, the passionate story of their lives before and after the crater left by El Txato’s murder tells us about the impossibility of forgetting and the need for forgiveness. Eight-episode series based on Fernando Aramburu's honomymous novel and first production in Spanish by HBO Europe.
Fraser has just moved to an American military base in Veneto. This is where he meets Caitlin, a girl his age. Both are experiencing confusion over their sexual and gender identities. They grow close, help one another out and end up pretending to be in a relationship to avoid pressure from their peers and the outside world. While Caitlin rejects a feminine side she wants no part of and which generates a void between her and her father, Fraser develops a crush for an older guy, Jonathan, who works with his mother Sarah. Their first experiences of love will have an explosive effect on their lives.