16 films included in the Perlak section compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award, sponsored for the 11th year running by the San Sebastián City Council and given as a tribute to the citizens, who cast their votes to decide the winner.
The Perlak section, sponsored by Armani Beauty, is made up of titles awarded or acclaimed at other international festivals. The screenings will take place in the Victoria Eugenia Theatre and the audience attending the official screening of each film can vote to choose the winning film. The award will be presented at the Festival closing gala.
The City of Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award is made up of two different awards: one going to the Best Film, coming with 50,000 euros, and the other to the Best European Film, with 20,000 euros. Both films will be forever connected to the city through this award delivered in participatory mode.
Jon Insausti, the Mayor of Donostia / San Sebastián, said: “We want cinema in Donostia to belong to the people too, and we want our Festival to be popular. The audience is what gives a film its meaning, and we believe it is right to give them a voice. We host a world-class event in our city—one of renowned international prestige—but we would like to stress that it is ours, a hallmark of Donostia’s identity, tailored to its people. In San Sebastián, cinema is not merely projected out to the world; it also looks inward".
The mayor added: “In an era of globalization—in a world accustomed to consuming content on screens in solitude—the festival is something we want to share as a community. This is how we celebrate the events that we feel are our own and represent who we are. Let us, then, experience this year’s film festival in the wonderful atmosphere of San Sebastian—and, above all, let us enjoy the Audience Award, that cherished pearl of the Festival".
Last year, the City of Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award went to The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film by Kaouther Ben Hania, following its win of the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize in Venice. Additionally, Amélie et la métaphysique des tubes, the debut film by Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han, won the Audience Award for Best European Film after being presented in a special screening as part of the Cannes Official Selection and won the Audience Award at the Annecy Festival.
Like in previous years, the San Sebastián City Council will distribute 1.000 invitations to the San Sebastián Festival amongst unemployed people who request them on the municipal website (www.donostia.eus), by calling 010, or at any Udalinfo office. Invitations can be requested from Monday 14th until the Wednesday and are intended for those who are unemployed, registered inhabitants of San Sebastián and over the age of 18. Once their details have been checked by Udalinfo, the tickets can be collected from the Udalinfo office (Calle Ijentea), showing proof of identity and a certificate of unemployment. The deadline for collecting invitations is 14:00 on Wednesday 16th September.
The Festival Director, José Luis Rebordinos, once again highlighted the importance of this collaboration with the San Sebastián City Council, while underlining the significance of the cinema as a “tool of inclusion”. “The Festival aims to remain a space that is attentive to different social realities. We put this philosophy into practice through our programming—giving visibility to different perspectives and experiences—but also through concrete initiatives like this award, which help engage society as a whole and facilitate access to cinema,” he noted.
Russia, 2022. When Gleb, a successful company director, finds himself under siege from mounting corporate pressures and an increasingly unstable world, the collapse of his carefully ordered life accelerates toward violence.
Peter, a hard-partying New York City club promoter accustomed to a life of excess, electronic music and endless nights, sees his whirlwind lifestyle upended when a woman he doesn't know shows up on his doorstep with Arlo, a 10-year-old boy she claims is his son. What started out as an impossible situation soon turns into a mad, fun and tender connection, as unexpected as it is transformative.
Surrounded by brutality but bound by tenderness, two World War I soldiers find a fragile sanctuary of love and art amid the shadows of the Belgian trenches. Lukas Dhont’s Coward asks a profound question for a generation sent to war: when the world demands violence, is walking away the truest act of bravery?
Fatherland centres on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika - actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins - from US dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. Returning home after sixteen years of exile in the US, Thomas Mann has to face not only a divided fatherland, but also a deep fracture within his own family.
The Gheorghius, a devout Romanian Norwegian couple, settle in a village in a remote fjord where they strike up a close relationship with their neighbours, the Halbergs. Their children bond despite the differences in their education. When the teenage Elia Gheorghiu turns up at school with bruises on her body, the community asks itself if the traditional education the children receive from their parents might have anything to do with it.
Reinforcements have been diverted to battle wildfires and all communication has been cut off. Hope Harbor's police outpost chief Bum-seok and officer Sung-ae struggle to defend a village of the elderly, while in the mountains, Sung-ki and the locals who set out to track the beast find themselves hunted instead. What begins as ignorance plants the seed of disaster, escalating through human conflict into a tragedy of cosmic proportions.
After accidentally witnessing a rape in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, 8-year-old Josephine starts to demonstrate violent and paranoid behaviour. The trauma destabilises her family as her parents seek justice and a way to recover her lost security.
Story narrating the interconnected stories of three men in three different eras. Three lives intimately linked by sexuality and desire, pain and inheritence. This is one of Federico García Lorca’s last, unfinished, works.
Iron Boy tells the tale of Christophe, an 11-year-old boy who tries to follow in his father's steps, helping in their family farm. But everything changes the day he is prescribed an incapacitating iron corset, meaning that he can no longer do the everyday farm chores. However, this sudden change will give Christophe the opportunity to discover new passions like swimming and music, and to make friends who will forever mark his life.
Shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, the film reveals in detail the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
As the director of a care facility for the elderly, Marie-Lou strives to introduce an innovative care philosophy based on listening and respecting residents’ dignity, despite resistance from some members of her staff. Her encounter with Mari, a Japanese theater director battling cancer, will forever change her life. By forming a deep, supportive friendship, the two women join forces in a shared struggle to “make the impossible possible.”
Matteo is playing tennis when a woman in a bride's dress runs onto the court. It's Greta. She kicks off her shoes, grabs a racket and invites him to play. For seven years, the woman will never be far from Matteo's mind. As they follow their paths and parallel lives, fate seems determined to keep them apart. But one day they run into each other again and now, perhaps, their time has come. Will it happen tonight?
When Alzheimer’s begins to erase her mother’s personality, Sarah leaves her exciting life as an activist and artist in 90’s San Francisco to return to her eccentric family's conservative small town. Initially confident she can manage the situation, she soon realizes she must accept the harsh, disorienting reality of the disease to become the daughter her family needs.
Joe and Angela's marriage is on thin ice. When they invite their enigmatic neighbours, Pina and Hawk, round for dinner, a seemingly innocent evening gives way to confessions, hidden desires and situations that are as awkward as they are funny, putting their relationship to the test.
In the vibrant New York of the late 80s, Jimmy George, a famous underground artist, is experiencing a decisive moment in his life in which, despite everything, beauty and love are still possible.
Shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, CIA agents Chris and Lee set out to Easter Island from Santiago, where they are stationed alongside their boss and bureau chief, MJ. Amongst the Island's iconic statues, as the longtime partners wrestle with their dark pasts and present conspiracies, Chris's newfound bond with a pair of rebellious students threatens to send everyone’s trip to this remote paradise sideways.