Actress Loreto Mauleón joins the actor and director Paco León to present the opening gala of the San Sebastian Festival’s 70th edition on Friday 16 at 20:30. The gala will be broadcast live by the TVE channel, La 2. The filmmaker Santiago Tabernero will direct a ceremony largely revolving around the event’s 70th anniversary.

The gala, paying homage to several participants of the Festival’s first edition in 1953, will see a variety of guests take to the stage to announce the contents of the edition. There will be no lack of surprises or live music performances and the FIPRESCI Grand Prix will be presented to the film Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021).

The event will also remember several people from the organisation who have recently passed away and to whom the Festival dedicates the edition: Alfredo Knuchel, member of the Selection Committee in 1991 and 1992 and delegate in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands from 1993 to 2010; Mariano Larrandia, member of the Management Committee in 1978 and of the Board of Directors in 1985; Tony Partearroyo, who was a member of the Selection Committee in 1993 and 1994, and José Ángel Herrero-Velarde, who had been connected to the Festival for more than 40 years as a member of the Management and Selection Committees, among other responsibilities.  

As usual, the opening gala will provide the perfect opportunity to welcome the Official Jury, made up of the casting director and filmmaker Antoinette Boulat (France), the director and screenwriter Tea Lindeburg (Denmark), the writer and journalist Rosa Montero (Spain), the filmmaker and visual artist Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (Lesotho), the director and screenwriter Hlynur Pálmason (Iceland) and the producer Matías Mosteirín (Argentina), President of the Official Jury. Next, the filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez together with the actors Miguel Herrán and Javier Gutiérrez will introduce the premiere of Modelo 77 / Prison 77, the film opening the Official Selection out of competition.

"With a gentle comedy tone"

In the words of Santiago Tabernero, the entire gala revolves around the Festival’s 70th anniversary and, in fact, this event “marks the character, tone and ideas” of a ceremony at which homage will also be paid to the audience who, at the end of the day “has supported the Festival and taken it to where it is today”. But, above all, the gala director believes that the “main ingredient” of the event will be its hosts, Loreto Mauleón and Paco León, a “charismatic and greatly loved” duo. “They form happy and delightful couple who will work together to ensure that the gala is not overly rigid, to do which, as well as announcing things to come, they will create a rapport with the audience using a gentle comedy tone. This will be a celebratory gala because we have a thousand reasons to be content”, he affirms.

As far as the stage design is concerned, its leitmotiv will be the Golden Shell, which is “the Festival’s biggest icon, specifically in its most recent version rather than its older, more baroque designs”. “We have created a series of illuminated arches offering highly interesting angles, in a formula which, while conceptual, has nothing solemn about it in the slightest. It will all look great on the screen and in the Kursaal itself”, promises Tabernero, referring to a gala that will be broadcast live on Television Española’s La 2 channel, ETB1, eitb.eus and the Festival website from 20:30. For the first time this year, there will be the possibility of watching the gala on the Festival's TikTok account, where you can subscribe to the Live Event.

Santiago Tabernero is a journalist, screenwriter and film director. He made his debut behind the camera with Vida y color (Life in Colour,2007), winner of the Audience Award at the Seminci in Valladolid and which was followed by Presentimientos (2013). As well as having put his name to several short films, he has also written the screenplays for films including Desvío al paraíso (Gerardo Herrero, 1994), Taxi (Carlos Saura, 1996) and Asfalto (Daniel Calparsoro, 2000). He has extensive experience in television, where he has created original formats such as Versión Española and the trilogy Torres y Reyes, Alaska y Coronas and Alaska y Segura, as well as having connections to programmes on the cinema including Días de Cine. He has been the artistic director of the Actual Festival since 2021.

Loreto Mauleón co-hosts the gala in a year when she participates in the San Sebastian Festival with the projects Los renglones torcidos de Dios / God’s Crooked Lines and Gelditasuna ekaitzean / La quietud en la tormenta, programmed respectively in Perlak and the Basque Cinema Gala. For his part, Paco León also comes to San Sebastian with a new film under his arm, Rainbow, an extremely personal take on the classic The Wizard of Oz screening among this year’s films at the Velodrome.