The San Sebastian Festival has confirmed the last three films to compete for the Golden Shell: one European production, one from Asia and another from the USA.
The film Yi miao zhong / One Second, by Zhang Yimou, will open the competition at San Sebastian Festival’s 69th edition. Yimou, one of the most reputed Chinese filmmakers of recent decades, will compete for the first time in the Official Selection with his particular homage to the cinema, following a prisoner who escapes from a labour camp at the height of the Cultural Revolution, hoping to find images of his long-lost daughter. Zhang Yi and Fan Wei embody the film’s leading characters. Several of the earlier films by the director, who chaired San Sebastian Festival’s Official Jury in 1997, have screened in Perlak, including Huozhe / To Live! (1994), You hua hao shuo / Keep Cool (1997), Ying xiong / Hero (2003) and Shi mian mai fu / The House of Flying Daggers (2004).
The director and writer of The Big Sick (Perlak 2017), nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, Michael Showalter returns to the big screen with The Eyes of Tammy Faye, following the rise and fall of the famous North American televangelist. The movie is produced and starred by Jessica Chastain, alongside fellow cast members Andrew Garfield and Vincent D’Onofrio.
The filmmaker, actor and screenwriter Thierry de Peretti, whose films Les Apaches / Apaches (2013) and A Violent Life (2017) were selected for the Cannes Quinzaine des Réalisateurs and Semaine de la Critique respectively, takes a closer look in Enquête sur un Scandale d'Etat / Undercover at a journalistic investigation into a former mole, witness to police corruption related to drug trafficking. Featuring in the cast are Roschdy Zem, Pio Marmaï, Vincent Lindon and Julie Moulier.
Peretti, Showalter and Yimou join the list of filmmakers who will compete for the Golden Shell: Inés Barrionuevo, Icíar Bollaín, Laurent Cantet, Terence Davies, Alina Grigore, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Zhang Ji, Fernando León de Aranoa, Tea Lindeburg, Claudia Llosa, Paco Plaza, Claire Simon and Jonás Trueba.
A prisoner is sent to a labour camp in China’s desolate northwest during the country’s Cultural Revolution. Using his wit, and with the sole purpose of seeing a newsreel containing a glimpse of his daughter, he escapes and heads for the cinema in a local town. There he hopes to find the film and get a hold of it. But on the way he comes across a young vagabond with the same desperate mission who runs away with the reel. Curiously, this enigmatic object, which both covet for very different reasons, will become the seed of an unexpected friendship.
October 2015. French Customs seized seven tons of cannabis in the heart of the capital. The same day, Hubert Antoine, a former mole with a hazy past, contacts Stéphane Vilner, journalist at Libération. He claims to be able to demonstrate the existence of the State's drug trafficking led by Jacques Billard, media figure and high-ranking French police officer. Suspicious at first, the young journalist finally dives into the investigation. It leads him to the darkest corners of the Republic.
An intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. In the 1970s and 80s, Tammy Faye and her husband, Jim Bakker, rose from humble beginnings to create the world’s largest religious broadcasting network and theme park, and were revered for their message of love, acceptance and prosperity. Tammy Faye was legendary for her indelible eyelashes, her idiosyncratic singing, and her eagerness to embrace people from all walks of life. However, it wasn’t long before financial improprieties, scheming rivals, and scandal toppled their carefully constructed empire.