Made in Spain, San Sebastian Festival’s non-competitive section showcasing a selection of the year’s Spanish films, will include eight movies previously screened at festivals including Cannes, Rotterdam, Malaga and Gijón.
Agustí Villaronga has competed three times in San Sebastian Festival’s Official Selection with Aro Tolbukhin en la mente del asesino / Aro Tolbukhin: In the Mind of a Killer, 2002, Pa negre / Black Bread, Silver Shell for the performance of Nora Navas, 2010) and El rey de la Habana / The King of Havana,Silver Shell for the actress Yordanka Ariosa, 2015. His latest film, El ventre del mar / The Belly of the Sea, recently pre-selected for the European Film Awards, won the Golden Biznaga for Best Film and the Silver Biznagas for Best Director, Screenplay, Male Performance, Music and Photography in Malaga.
The feature film debut from Ainhoa Rodríguez, Destello bravío, premiered in Rotterdam Festival’s Official Selection and won two Silver Biznagas – Special Jury Prize and Best Editing – in Malaga. Destello bravío focusses on a group of women who rebel against their routine in a small country town.
Ama is the second film, the first single-handed, from Júlia de Paz, who formerly visited San Sebastian Festival with the anthology film La filla d’algu (Made in Spain 2019). Ama competed in Malaga’s Official Selection, where it won the Silver Biznaga for Best Actress for its leading character, Tamara Casellas.
Also coming from Malaga’s Official Selection is the debut film by Ezekiel Montes, Hombre muerto no sabe vivir. Antonio Dechent stars in this thriller about a man who observes the generation change taking place in the construction company for which he has worked all his life, in a context of violence and crime.
In addition, the Malaga Festival Official Documentary Section selected Sediments / Sediments, the second film from Adrián Silvestre, winner of the Special Jury Prize in Thessaloniki Film Festival. Sediments accompanies six trans women on their trip to a small town in the province of León.
The section will screen the non-fiction movie about Luis Buñuel programmed in Cannes Classics at the last Festival de Cannes. In Buñuel, un cineasta surrealista / Buñuel, a Surrealist Filmmaker, Javier Espada links the director from Aragon with the world of art and highlights the influence of his childhood and youth on the making of his films, in a cinema encompassing his vision of the world, his doubts and his obsessions. The screening coincides with the 44th anniversary of the year Buñuel received the honorary Golden Shell.
Un blues per a Teheran / Teheran Blues is the directorial debut of the film journalist, writer and critic Javier Tolentino. The film, which closed Gijón International Film Festival, paints a picture of Iran and its dialectic between tradition and modernity through a young Kurdish poet who wants to be a film director.
The section will also include the winner of the Goya for Best Documentary Film and Best Editing, El año del descubrimiento / The Year of Discovery, by Luis López Carrasco, following its premiere in Rotterdam and its acclaimed screening at other festivals. López Carrasco turns his camera towards a bar in Cartagena to narrate an alternative story to the euphoria gripping the Spain of 1992.
Made in Spain has the SGAE Foundation as its Collaborator. In addition, for two years the SGAE Foundation has been giving its Dunia Ayaso Award at the Festival. This award, conceived as homage to the screenwriter and director from the Canary Islands who died seven years ago, recognises cinematic works which either have female characters in the lead parts of the story or portray the situation of women in society. Furthermore, since 2019 the Foundation has funded the Best Basque Screenplay Award, promoted by the Professional Association of Basque Screenwriters.
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Ama is the story of many women exposed, alone, to the mythicised status of motherhood. Kicked out of their home, Pepa and her daughter Leila walk the tightrope of finding a place to stay with no-one to ask for help.
Luis Buñuel, pioneer of the purest surrealist cinema since Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) his first film, maintained continuous references to surrealist postulates during his cinema career in Mexico, France and Spain. Buñuel never ceased to cultivate these principles that emerged from his childhood, elements which, like dreams, were among his most basic creative pillars and largely shaped the singular nature of his films. Buñuel’s cinema, like Goya’s paintings, lies along the creative path not only of filmmakers, but also of writers, painters and playwrights. This documentary will allow a new generation of young audiences to discover this universal filmmaker. Buñuel’s vision remains provocative today, and is enhanced by his ties to art and literature.
"There’s going to be a mighty, almighty flash and everything’s going to change...”. Isa records messages to herself for when she disappears or loses her memory. Cita feels trapped in a marriage in a house full of saints and virgins. María returns to the town of her birth to face her loneliness. The women of a small rural town, suspended in time and beset by depopulation, live between the apathy of their everyday lives where nothing out of the ordinary ever happens and a deep desire for liberating experiences to reunite them with the place where they were happy, or at least dreamt that they were. Each, in her own way, rebels against their routine.
Neighbours, youngsters and unemployed workers chat in a bar among cigarettes, breakasts and snacks. They remember unusual dreams, share their worries about finding a job and make plans for the future. The bar is located in Cartagena, in southeast Spain. As the day goes on, noise from the strikes against the industrial crisis of 1992 can be heard as they draw closer. That year the Barcelona Olympic Games and the Seville Expo were held, linked to the celebration of the 5th Centenary of the Discovery of America. The country was presented to the international community as a modern, developed and dynamic country. Meanwhile in Cartagena, the protests against the crisis grow increasingly violent until coming to a peak in a mass uprising ending with burning of the regional parliament.
A conflict evoking the wounds of man. June 1816. Alliance, a French Navy frigate, founders on a sandbar off the coast of Senegal. The lifeboats are unable to take all those on board and a rickety vessel is built. Forcing 147 men onto the precarious raft, it is cut loose and left to fend for itself. Hunger, the inclemency of the sea, madness and a bloody fight flare up on the drifting raft. A horror lasting for days and days. Only nine of those 147 men saved their lives. Among them was Savigny, an implacable medical officer, and Thomas, a rebellious marine private. Amid the confrontation, each deploys different attitudes to survive. A scenario revealing the greatest of cruelties and the sweetest of mercies.
The story follows Tano, who has worked all his life for Manuel, a construction mogul who had the entire city in his pocket in his heyday. Now, in his old age, Tano sees how Manuel is no longer able to run the company and how the whole structure is faced with a generation change, new people, new ventures, a new way of running the company, but the same violence as always.
Like the Earth, our interior is composed of different strata, which forge our identity and tell our life story. What circumstances intervene in this process and make us become who we are today? Six trans women travel to a small town in León where they will explore unusual landscapes, as well as the ins and outs of their own personalities. Looking for answers to what connects them as a group, they will learn to deal with their differences. An engaging and entertaining story about empathy, individuality and the need to belong. An X-ray set in the present, which looks back into the past and projects itself into the future, celebrating the extraordinary possibility of being unique and unrepeatable.
Different faces show us an Iran where tradition and modernity coexist and clash. Through its music and its people, Erfan invites us to discover a country as mysterious as it is cultured. He is a young Kurd, funny and ironic, who aspires to become a film director. He sings, writes poetry, lives with his parents and his parrot, but knows nothing about love…