74th San Sebastian Festival - 18/26 September 2026
74SSIFF - 18/26 September 2026
Official
Sponsors
Sponsors
Media
Partner
Partner
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).
Calls for entries - 2026 Log-in to MY FESTIVAL
Complete this form with your details for accessing the contents reserved for registered users.
Enter your email and press send. You will receive a link through which you can reset your password
Complete this form with your details for accessing the contents reserved for registered users.
Agenda
...
Programme and tickets Search in programme
Search 
Film Talks
Conversations
Conversations
Fichas
Fichas
The round-table discussion will analyse the international landscape of audiovisual laboratories and project development support programmes, their models, methodologies and capacity to foster the creation, circulation and international networking of new projects. Drawing on the experience of professionals in charge of these initiatives and two filmmakers who have taken part in them, both perspectives will be brought together to reflect on their practical usefulness, their main challenges and how they can better respond to current needs.
Tabakalera-Laboratory
Sunday 20th, September
12:30 h.
Free invitations available through the usual channels.
Tickets available from Sunday 13 September at 9am
Benjamín Naishtat is an Argentinian filmmaker who graduated from the Universidad del Cine and Le Fresnoy. His feature film "Puan" (2023), co-directed with María Alché, won the Best Screenplay award at San Sebastián and was nominated for a Goya for Best Ibero-American Film. This year, he will be competing for the Golden Shell in the Official Selection with his new feature film, "Glaxo", and will also open the Zabaltegi – Tabakalera section with the film "Pedro en el país", also co-directed with Alché. In this conversation, Benjamín Naishtat will share his working and creative processes, discuss building a career in the world of cinema, and talk about the challenges and lessons that run through his latest works.
Conversations - Nest
Wednesday 23rd, September
10:00 h.
Tickets available from Monday 14 September at 9am
Following the screening of Josephine, director Beth de Araújo joins us for a conversation about the making of the film, her creative process and the way she approaches her work. After premiering at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, where it received both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize, Josephine makes its debut at Perlak, where it will compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award. The screening offers the starting point for an open conversation about filmmaking and everything the director would like to share about the journey behind the film.
Saturday 26th, September
10:00 h.
Tickets available from Tuesday 15 September at 9am
Documentary directed by Cecilia Barriga and shot in 2025 and 2026 on joint initiative of the Commissioner for the Holding of the 50th Anniversary of Spain in Freedom and the Institute of Youth (Injuve). In the work, more than 80 young people from all over Spain discuss, at a series of meetings, the gender crisis, the contradictions of their lives: a collective reflection on the meaning of being young, today's relationships, identity, sexuality, violence and - always - partying. An exercise of democracy - as a conversation between strangers - setting out and celebrating thought, and also fear and joy when looking to the future.
50 years of freedom
Tuesday 22nd, September
12:00 h.
Tickets available from Monday 14 September at 9am
The event will feature Antxón Gómez, an art director and production designer, known for his longstanding collaborations with Pedro Almodóvar, including his latest film, Amarga Navidad. Enric Pastor, co-founder and editorial director of MANERA, will moderate the conversation.
The conversation stems from a collaboration developed within the framework of the San Sebastián International Film Festival and the Basque Architecture Institute, promoted by the Department of Housing and Urban Agenda of the Basque Government,
creating a space for dialogue between cinema, architecture, and design.
The event will invite reflection on the relationship between art direction and cinema. Antxón Gómez’s contribution will explore this connection from different perspectives, including the role of design in cinematic storytelling, the significance attributed to specific objects and the process behind their selection, the choice of filming locations—with particular attention to houses—and the conceptual reasoning underpinning these decisions.
As part of the Festival’s Agenda 2030 Euskadi Basque Country activities, Diego Luna reflects on cinema as a way of engaging with reality. Drawing on his experience as an actor, director and producer, both in Mexico and internationally, and his connection to Ambulante —an organization he founded in 2005 with Gael García Bernal and Elena Fortes to promote documentary film as a tool for social and cultural transformation—, he explores what happens when a film moves beyond the screen: the conversations it sparks, the communities it brings together, and its ability to open up new ways of seeing and transforming our surroundings.
Monday 21st, September
16:00 h.
Free invitations available through the usual channels.
Tickets available from Monday 14 September at 9am
Fernando Postigo, one of the photojournalists who best documented the social and political life of Donostia during the Transition and the decades that followed, will look back on his career and his approach to the profession.The conversation will explore his years working in the press, covering everything from terrorist attacks and demonstrations to press conferences and cultural events, as well as his work for the San Sebastian Festival, his memories and some of his most significant photographs. He will also reflect on the relationship between an artistic vision and the demands of daily newspaper work, and on the responsibility of building, image by image, an archive that bears witness to an era and can be passed on to future generations.The session will begin with a screening of the short film Postigo Express, directed by Peter Decherney, who will then join the conversation to discuss the origins of the film and the process of working together.
Sunday 20th, September
11:00 h.
Free invitations available through the usual channels.
Tickets available from Sunday 13 September at 9am
Filmmaker Ira Sachs, chair of the Official Jury at this year’s festival, will present his latest film, "The Man I Love", at Perlak, following its premiere in the Official Selection at Cannes. His visit to the festival will provide an opportunity to discuss this new work and his career in film. Over the course of a career spanning more than thirty-five years, Ira Sachs has built up a deeply personal filmography, characterised by a precise and unsentimental perspective on human relationships – both romantic and familiar – as well as on the complexities of desire, sexuality and intimacy. It will be a unique opportunity to gain an insight into his creative world and, together with him, explore a career marked by a singular perspective on the human condition.
Conversations - Nest
Jordan Firstman will talk about the creative process behind Club Kid and what it has meant to make his first fiction feature after years of directing, writing and acting in short films and series. He will reflect on the challenges he faced and the decisions he made while bringing his first feature to life. The film premiered in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and will now screen in Perlak, where it is in competition for the Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award.
Conversations - Nest
Tuesday 22nd, September
16:00 h.
Free invitations available through the usual channels.
Tickets available from Monday 14 September at 9am
Family has for many years been a common storytelling tool in national television series. However, as society has evolved, its very definition has become increasingly diverse and plural. Both television and audiovisual streaming platforms have helped portray and disseminate transformations in family structures, as well as the new ways in which emotional bonds are formed today.This conversation seeks to explore, on the one hand, how family relationships are currently portrayed compared with those of the 1990s; and, on the other, the influence these stories have on the collective imagination.
Conversations - Industria
Saturday 19th, September
17:00 h.
Free invitations available through the usual channels.
Tickets available from Sunday 13 September at 9am
On July 7, 1970, the premiere of Glauber Rocha’s Cabezas cortadas at the San Sebastián Film Festival sparked one of the most turbulent and revealing episodes in the history of film criticism in Spain. An aggressive review in La Vanguardia prompted an unprecedented public response signed by young figures from Spain’s film culture, including Miguel Marías, Fernando Méndez-Leite, Gonzalo Suárez and Emilio Martínez Lázaro. Fifty-six years later, this event offers an opportunity to reflect on the evolution of the critical gaze, accompanied by the presentation of the 4K trailer for the film’s recent restoration by FlixOlé and Video Mercury Films, a screening of exclusive testimonies from those who took part in that protest, and a panel discussion with Javier Mosqueda (restorer) and Miguel López (Video Mercury Films/FlixOlé).
Saturday 19th, September
12:00 h.
Free invitations available through the usual channels.
Tickets available from Sunday 13 September at 9am
Naëmi Ada, a graduate of the DFFB in Berlin, is featured in the New Directors section with her first feature film, "Body of Glass". This conversation offers an intimate encounter with a filmmaker at the start of her career. It is an opportunity to gain first-hand insight into the creative process behind her debut and the decisions that shaped the film. The conversation will also explore the challenges, lessons learnt and hurdles involved in tackling a feature film for the first time. A space for dialogue and inspiration for those who are beginning to develop their own cinematic vision.
Conversations - Nest
Thursday 24th, September
15:30 h.
Tickets available from Tuesday 15 September at 9am
When identity categories prove insufficient, the body becomes a narrative device. In recent years, Ibero-American LGBTIQA+ cinema has explored the construction of identity through personal experience. Filmmakers rely on autobiographical material, family memories, and processes of transition to create stories and spaces in which to reflect on identity, desire, and memory.This panel proposes a reflection on this trend, the tensions between reality and fiction, and the ways in which the body becomes a tool for storytelling, remembering, and imagining other ways of inhabiting the world.
Conversations - Industria
Tuesday 22nd, September
10:30 h.
Free entry until full capacity
Tickets available from Monday 14 September at 9am
The Interterritorial Working Group for Gender Equality in Audiovisual (GTI), made up of AAMMA, AMMA, CIMA, Dona i Cinema, Dones Visuals, (H)emen and MIA, together with the RTVE Equality Observatory, will organise on 21 September the event Who Has the Right to Imagine? For a Feminist, Anti-Racist and Decolonial Audiovisual Industry, supported by the Ministry of Culture.The programme will include New Narratives for New Imaginaries / Filmmakers Transforming the Narrative, a debate in which filmmakers will reflect on the possibility of creating new ways of looking, telling stories and representing themselves, questioning who has had—and who has—the right to imagine the world we live in.
Monday 21st, September
12:00 h.
Free invitations available through the usual channels.
Tickets available from Monday 14 September at 9am
The Interterritorial Working Group for Gender Equality in Audiovisual (GTI), made up of AAMMA, AMMA, CIMA, Dona i Cinema, Dones Visuals, (H)emen and MIA, together with the RTVE Equality Observatory, will organise on 21 September the event Who Has the Right to Imagine? For a Feminist, Anti-Racist and Decolonial Audiovisual Industry, supported by the Ministry of Culture.As part of the event, the conversation Inspiring Practices and Policies for Incorporating an Anti-Racist and Decolonial Perspective into Audiovisual will examine the barriers and forms of violence faced by migrant and racialised women throughout the audiovisual production chain, while putting forward proposals to address these structural inequalities.
Monday 21st, September
09:30 h.
Free invitations available through the usual channels.
Tickets available from Monday 14 September at 9am
At a time when the audiovisual industry is able to create and distribute more content than ever before, the great challenge is attracting and sustaining audience attention. The proliferation of platforms, the influence of social media, and recommendation algorithms have transformed the way we discover and consume content.In a context shaped by audiovisual consumption, this conversation invites us to reflect on how audiences discover and access audiovisual works, what strategies the industry is developing to engage new audiences, and how traditional distribution models coexist with new phenomena emerging from digitalisation.
Conversations - Industria
Tabakalera-Prisma
Thursday 24th, September
12:30 h.
Free entry until full capacity
Tickets available from Tuesday 15 September at 9am
Official Sponsor:
Media Partner: 
Official Collaborators: 
Associated Institutions:
Opening hours: Continuous hours during the Festival:
Monday to Sunday from 09:00 to 14:00
and from 16:00 to 20:00
Monday to Sunday from 09:00 to 14:00
and from 16:00 to 20:00
Suscribe to our newsletter
We inform you that the personal data you provide to us on completing this form will be processed by the San Sebastian Festival as the body responsible for this website. The personal data we request will be processed for the purpose of sending you our newsletter. Authorisation to do so is given through the consent of the interested party. Only the San Sebastian Festival will send you messages and we will not disclose your data to third parties. We inform you that the data you provide to us will be stored in the Mailrelay (email marketing providers) servers, located within the EU. See the Mailrelay privacy policy. If you do not enter the data appearing as mandatory on the form, we may be unable to fulfil your request. You can exercise your rights of access, rectification, limitation and deletion of data at privacidad@sansebastianfestival.com. You can consult additional and detailed information on Data Production in our privacy policy.