72nd San Sebastian Festival - 20/28 September 2023
71SSIFF - 22/30 September 2023
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Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
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Agenda
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Zabaltegi-Tabakalera
Zabaltegi-Tabakalera
Zabaltegi-Tabakalera
Films
Films
Opening Film
Thomas Salvador
France
115 min.
Pierre, a Parisian engineer, goes up into the Alps for his work. Irresistibly attracted by what surrounds him, he camps out alone high in the mountains and leaves behind his everyday life. Up there he meets Léa, a chef of an alpine restaurant, while mysterious glows glitter in the deep mountains.
Diego Céspedes
Chile - France
17 min.
Short film
Nataly, a trans woman, is visiting her former lover Leon with her daughter Secreto in a mysterious reclusive community hiding from the sun. These reunions will bring back the memory of a toxic and abusive relationship to Nataly.
Closing Film
Laura Citarella
Argentina - Germany
250 min.
A woman goes missing. Two men set out to look for her: both love her. Why did she go? Each of them has his own suspicions, and keeps them from the other, who (mysteriously) never becomes his rival. Neither are right, but is anyone? That sudden flight becomes the secret thread running through a series of tales subtly woven by the film: the secret of another woman's heart, also lost many years ago; the secret of life in a rural town, shaken to the core by a supernatural occurrence that nobody seems to notice; the secret of the plain, that spreads relentlessly and eats everything in its way, like the shadows that flood the world after dusk.
Anders Emblem
Norway
78 min.
Asta tries to find meaning and a sense of place in the coastal town in Western Norway where she works as a journalist. As she attempts to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of an asylum seeker, her personal life and her views on justice are affected.
Santiago Loza
Argentina
75 min.
A stone falls from the sky in a mountain village. Two friends set out to find it in the countryside. On the way they talk, remember a deceased friend, laugh, discuss, meet other seekers. On the way, poetry is read, poetry is heard, poetry is felt in the wind. From the beginning of the day until the light goes out. One or more goodbyes, but also encounters and promises. A film about friendships, winter landscapes and something as useless and necessary as poetry.
Peter Strickland
UK - Australia
12 min.
Short film
An ageing porno director makes a commentary in 2022 for the DVD of an underground 16mm film he made in 1972 that has recently been rediscovered. As the beautiful stud in the film undergoes a series of erotic reveries, the director laments his doomed love affair with his protagonist.
Carla Simón
Spain
24 min.
Short film
Carla is pregnant and naked, just like the snapshots showing the poses adopted by her mother while pregnant with Carla herself. The sunlight slips in through the windows. We see flashes in Super-8 of mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers; smiling, sewing, reciting poems. We then see a young girl growing up from the 60s until today, passing through the 80s, crossing the thresholds of womanhood and history, until she meets the pregnant Carla beside the blue sky of the Catalan coast.
Not in competition
Carlota Pereda
Spain - France
100 min.
During the stifling Extremaduran summer, a mysterious stranger comes to Sara’s town and kidnaps the girls who ruthlessly tease her every day. And she sees the whole thing. Only Sara can save the girls, but should she do it?
Estibaliz Urresola
Spain
30 min.
Short film
Rita belongs to a women’s choir on the point of breaking up because they have lost the municipal grant that allowed them to pay the rental on their rehearsal room. Now the group has to decide whether or not to accept sponsorship from one of the companies responsible for causing most pollution in the valley.
Zinemira Kimuak
Andrés Di Tella
Argentina
90 min.
Short pieces including images taken with a mobile phone, personal photos and found material. Everyday incidents, childhood memories, portraits of friends, travel chronicles, readings and songs: diaries.
Elena López Riera
Switzerland - France - Spain
105 min.
It’s summer in a small village in south-eastern Spain. A storm threatens to cause the river running through it to overflow yet again. According to popular belief, a number of women have the “water inside” and are predestined to disappear with each new flood. Ana lives with her mother and her grandmother in a house eyed with suspicion by the other locals. In this electric atmosphere preceding the rain, Ana meets José as she struggles to banish her ghosts.
Ikusmira Berriak 2018
Hlynur Pálmason
Denmark - Iceland - France - Sweden
143 min.
In the late 19th century, a young Danish priest travels to a remote part of Iceland to build a church and photograph its people. But the deeper he goes into the unforgiving landscape, the more he strays from his purpose, his mission and morality.
Lee Changdong
South Korea
28 min.
Short film
Eight-year-old Chul runs home during class because he is afraid that his mother, who is suffering from depression, might kill herself while she is alone at home.
Lur Olaizola
Spain
21 min.
Short film
An actress and a filmmaker rehearse a movie script. The screenplay includes excerpts from the diary written by María Dolores González Katarain, Yoyes, during her exile in Mexico between 1980 and 1985, after having left ETA. As the script progresses, hints and references to other women appear amongst Yoyes’s words: Ulrike Meinhof, Simone de Beauvoir, Rocío Díazescobar, Alexandra Kollontai, Tina Modotti. Meanwhile, outside it grows darker.
Not in competition
Zinemira Kimuak
Natalia López Gallardo
Mexico - Argentina
117 min.
In the midst of a silent divorce, Isabel leaves the city with her two children for her family's abandoned country house. She soon discovers that the sister of her housekeeper, María (Antonia Olivares), has gone missing. When Isabel offers her help, an unspoken pact to find the missing one is born between the two women. Meanwhile, Roberta (Aida Roa), the police commander in charge of the investigation, tries to get her son out of the cartels. The countryside is mined with confusion and danger, but regardless of these circumstances, determination in the face of destiny subsists.
Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace
UK
108 min.
An immersive archival journey through the explosive New York music scene of the early 2000s. Set against the backdrop of 9/11 and a world unaware of the seismic political, technological and cultural shifts about to occur, Meet Me in the Bathroom, tells the story of the last great romantic age of Rock'n'Roll through the prism of a handful of era defining bands: The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, YEAH YEAH YEAHs and Interpol.
Ruth Beckermann
Austria
100 min.
For more than a hundred years, the novel, Josefine Mutzenbacher or The Story of a Viennese Whore, has been the subject of controversy for its lustful depiction of child and female sexuality. Though published anonymously, over the years the novel has been attributed to the Austrian writer, Felix Salten (author of Bambi), and despite being banned for a period has also been celebrated as a world-renowned work of Viennese literature. With an ad in a newspaper, Ruth Beckermann announces a casting call for a film based on the well-known pornographic novel: "Looking for men between the ages of 16 and 99".
Takayuki Fukata
Japan
44 min.
Medium-length film
Itchan and her older sister Satchan go to the house of their grandmother, who is currently in a nursing home. They start cleaning the house in preparation for its renovation, but gradually the two discover the subtle gulf that lies between them.
Hlynur Pálmason
Denmark - Iceland
22 min.
Short film
A story of siblings building a tree house together over the course of a year. We experience the beauty and brutality of the seasons as we follow them through their struggles and moments of joy.
Erik Shirai, Masako Tsumura
Japan
14 min.
Short film
Nowhere to go but everywhere follows the extraordinary journey of Yasuo Takamatsu as he searches for his wife in the same ocean that stole her from him. After the 2011 tsunami that ravaged Northern Japan, Yasuo discovers his wife's mangled pink cellphone with a text message that never reached him. "I want to come home". This message, seemingly from the grave, propels Yasuo on his life mission. To find her and bring her home.
Ann Oren
Germany
86 min.
An introverted foley artist, Eva struggles to create sounds for a commercial featuring a horse. Empowered by a horsetail growing out of her body, she lures a botanist into an affair, through a game of submission. Piaffe is a visceral journey into control, gender, and artifice.
Cyril Schäublin
Switzerland
93 min.
New technologies are transforming a 19th-century watchmaking town in Switzerland. Josephine, a young factory worker, produces the unrest wheel, swinging in the heart of the mechanical watch. Exposed to new ways of organizing money, time and labour, she gets involved with the local movement of the anarchist watchmakers, where she meets Russian traveller Pyotr Kropotkin.
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