A total of 14 short films will compete for the Tabakalera Film and Audiovisual Laboratory-Nest Award. The selected works bring a take on a variety of human conflicts and experiences focused on parent-child connection, emotional bonds, and the marks these relations leave on our identity. Told through widely differing formats, such as essays, fiction and non-fiction, some of the stories reflect the duality between memory and oblivion, or tradition and progress; others turn the spotlight on experiences associated to the awakening of desire or the discovery of one’s own identity, while other titles portray the harsh side of social reintegration or the cruelty of sexist violence.  

Over the years, Nest has become a section that makes it possible to take the temperature of how cinematic language is used in film schools around the world, that helps projects to achieve distribution, and that provides a meeting space, where new gazes and other ways of telling stories come together. In fact, this edition, a total of 503 submissions have been received from 232 schools in 61 different countries. These figures represent a new record for submissions in the history of San Sebastián Festival’s international meeting of films schools which, in its twenty-fifth edition, has selected works from schools in Austria, China, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and Switzerland.

For many young people this is the starting block of their career and their first contact with the film audience and industry. Indeed, among the more than a thousand filmmakers who have participated in the meeting since its creation in 2002, are names including Leonardo van Dijl, Oren Gerner, Raven Jackson, Isabel Lamberti, Léa Mysius, Jerónimo Quevedo, Kiro Russo and Laura Wandel, who have later gone on to premiere their subsequent works both at San Sebastián and at other prestigious festivals on the international circuit. This is also the case of Diego Céspedes, director of La misteriosa mirada del flamenco / The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, winner of the Un Certain Regard Award in Cannes and shown in Horizontes Latinos, and that of Jaume Claret Muxart, who premiered Estrany riu (Strange River) in the Orizzonti section at Venice and later participated in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera.

At the Festival’s 74th edition, filmmakers who competed in Nest in the day with their short films will now participate in different sections with their feature films. This is the case, for example, of Javier Ruiz Caldera, who presented his short film Treitum (2002) at the first edition of Nest and will compete this year in the Official Selection with 5 minutos más / 5 more minutes. Figuring respectively in New Directors with Sieben Tage Februar / February, Seven Days and Bloques erráticos / Erratics are Tatjana Moutchnik and Thomas Woodroffe, who previously visited Nest with Der letzte Kuss / The Last Kiss (2014) and Fiebre Austral / Austral Fever (2019). Furthermore, Horizontes Latinos includes the film Moscas / Flies, by Fernando Eimbcke, who showed the short film No todo es permanente at the 2008 edition of Nest. A year later, Bojina Panyotova participated in the section with A domicile, while at this edition she will compete in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera with With Love and Rage.

This section is, therefore, a window into the films of the future and yet another pillar enabling the Festival to maintain its system of providing comprehensive support to filmmakers at all stages of their development: from training, through the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE); project development, thanks to the Ikusmira Berriak programme; Nest as a platform for releasing their short films in official competition, and, lastly, the showing of their feature films at the Festival itself. 

Five days to listen, learn and share

The meeting will run at the Festival’s 74th edition from Monday 21 to Friday 25 September. For five days, the fourteen selected candidates will present their works, attend filmmakers’ talks and meet industry professionals. A jury of students from the selected school and presided over by a professional from the world of film will choose, from among all of the selected works, the winner of the Tabakalera Film and Audiovisual Laboratory-Nest Award, coming with 10,000 euros for the director of the winning short film.

The new award reinforces Tabakalera’s commitment to supporting and accompanying creative work and new generations of filmmakers, while continuing, within the framework of the San Sebastián Festival, the work that the centre carries out throughout the year through its Film and Audiovisual Lab.

Similarly, for the second year running and following the success of the previous edition, the SFC | Rendez-vous Industry, a forum dedicated to short film professionals organised by the Festival de Cannes, will offer the filmmakers selected for Nest the opportunity to submit their films free of charge as part of the   curated market catalogue, and to participate in the industry events taking place from 16-19 May 2027 at the Cannes Short Film Corner.

As usual, during the students’ meeting, all of the short films to have won an award in the history of the section will screen on a loop in Tabakalera’s Medialab Studio. Entry is free.