The Koldo Mitxelena cultural centre organises the course entitled 'Filmmakers' Dialogue' for cinema students and aficionados, given by film professionals together with the Z365, festival all year round initiative run by the San Sebastian Festival and the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. The dialogues, which started on 14 January and will end in April, will be followed by the total of 280 people registered either in person or online.

Two of the five sessions will run in February, starting on Tuesday 8th with the presence of the film director Icíar Bollaín, who will talk to the producer Koldo Zuazua. Taking as their basis Maixabel (2021), premiered in the Festival's Official Selection and winner of the Irizar Basque Film Award, they will analyse the film's development to date and reveal how they go about their projects together.  

On 18 February it will be the turn of the Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón and the editor Ana Pfaff, who, as well as being collaborators, are also members of the teaching staff at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. Based on their collaboration on Estiu 1993 / Summer 1993, (2017), the two will discuss editing and their cinematic vision.

All the sessions will take place at 19:00, in Areto Nagusia at the Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea.

Each filmmaker will be accompanied by one of the people that they usually collaborate with in various areas, because although the artistic vision is usually attributed to the director, in a film project, aspects like the script, financing, production, shooting or post-production undeniably form part of the creative process. For this reason, each filmmaker and their companion will share their different artistic visions and will include working materials such as dossiers, scripts, shooting plans and documents shared between the production and direction departments.

This course aims to provide cinema fans with new keys to achieving a better understanding of what is hidden from view in the production and making of a film. 'Filmmakers' dialogue' will reveal, in an entertaining series of conversations, the intra-history of the creative process of filmmaking.

The course, as well as decentralising the director's unique gaze, also aims to make the most traditional aspects in the development of a project better known, and as a result, to learn to watch and interpret cinema in a critical manner, in a context whose circumstances are leading it to evolve in every possible direction.

This new commitment to cinema by Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea comes on top of the measures to support, promote and disseminate audiovisual projects that the Department of Culture of the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council is carrying out in this area. These range from the setting up of the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, to the grants to enroll at this school, the Lanabesa grant programme –which since 2017, has provided support for more than 70 long-term audiovisual projects– or Gipuzkoa Provincial Council becoming a member of the San Sebastian-Gipuzkoa Film Commission.

Zinemaldia + Plus showing on Saturday 12

In the context of Zinemaldia + Plus, the yearly focus with which the Festival participates monthly in the programme of Tabakalera's shared public screen, also taking place on Saturday 12th is the programme dedicated to Nest: Award-winning Films. The showing will include the 'making of' by Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola student Paula González García, entitled Notas sobre Nest (Notes on Nest), plus the two winning short films of the 69th edition: the winner of the Nest award, U Šumi / In the Woods, by Sara Grgurić, and Podul de piatrâ / Pont de pedra, by Artur-Pol Camprubí, recipient of the special jury mention. The filmmakers will introduce the screenings.