The San Sebastián Festival will present a Donostia Award in recognition of her career to the producer Esther García, a key figure in bringing Spanish and Latin American cinema into the international arena, precisely coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the El Deseo company. Added to this, the official poster of the 73rd edition will pay tribute to the actress Marisa Paredes, one of the Festival’s best loved stars since her first visit in 1977 and until her passing last year.

At the event held today in Tabakalera-International Centre for Contemporary Culture to reveal the posters for the Festival, its Director, José Luis Rebordinos, and Head of Communication, Ruth Pérez de Anucita, announced the Donostia Award going to Esther García, the producer at El Deseo with more than a hundred titles to her name.

For the eighth year running, a prominent figure from today’s cinema features on a poster which, since 2018, has rendered the portraits of Isabelle Huppert, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Sigourney Weaver, Juliette Binoche, Javier Bardem and Cate Blanchett. This year’s poster comes with an image of Marisa Paredes, designed by the San Sebastián studio Wallijai based on a shot taken by the photographer Manuel Outumuro in Madrid in 2000.  

Wallijai has also created the posters for the other sections in keeping with the trend of combining photography and illustration, this time around playing with the idea that all of us have a variety of films tucked away inside us. Each poster also comes with more or less direct references to different genres: drama (New Directors), war films (Horizontes Latinos), love stories and musicals (Zabaltegi-Tabakalera), sci-fi (Perlak), anime (Nest), horror (Culinary Zinema), adventure yarns (Zinemira) and westerns (Made in Spain).  

These posters will soon be joined by those put together for Klasikoak, an initiative which, since 2024, encompasses three proposals under the same umbrella heading: the Klasikoak retrospective, dedicated this year to the North American screenwriter Lillian Hellman; the Festival’s Klasikoak section, and the Filmoteca Vasca cycle running from October to December in Bilbao, Donostia, Pamplona, Saint Jean de Luz and Vitoria.

Esther García, production independence, derring-do and excellence

Constantly driven by her identifying features of independence, derring-do and excellence, Esther García (Cedillo de la Torre, Segovia, 1956) has worked on more than a hundred productions. In 1986 she joined the El Deseo production company created a year earlier by siblings Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar, having previously participated as a secretary, production assistant and manager on films including Pim, pam, pum… ¡Fuego! (Pedro Olea, 1975), which competed in San Sebastián’s Official Selection; Siete chicas peligrosas (Pedro Lazaga, 1979), Sé infiel y no mires con quién (Fernando Trueba, 1985), El año de las luces (Fernando Trueba, 1986), La vida alegre (Fernando Colomo, 1987) and El juego más divertido (Emilio Martínez Lázaro, 1988). She has also had a hand in series such as Curro Jiménez, directed amongst others by Mario Camus, Pilar Miró and the Romero Marchent brothers, and Los pazos de Ulloa (Gonzalo Suárez), having similarly worked with Mariano Ozores in a large body of his work.

However, since her first collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar on Matador (1986) she has become an essential piece in all subsequent projects by the director from La Mancha, who also received the Donostia Award at last year’s San Sebastián Festival.  Her name is mentioned in association with those of the Almodóvar siblings on films including La ley del deseo / The Law of Desire (1987), from which the production company takes its name, and Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios / Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), a contender for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, an accolade won 10 years later by Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (1999). As well as El flor de mi secreto / The Flower of My Secret (1995), screened out of competition in San Sebastián’s Official Selection, other joint projects are Hable con ella / Talk to Her (2002), for which Pedro Almodóvar bagged the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award; La mala educación / Bad Education (2004), which opened Cannes; and Volver (2006), winner at the French fest of best screenplay and best actress for all of the women in the cast before going on to harvest almost a hundred awards, including the FIPRESCI prize in San Sebastián.

They returned to Cannes with Los abrazos rotos / Broken Embraces (2009), La piel que habito / The Skin I Live In (2011), Julieta (2016) and Dolor y gloria / Pain and Glory (2019), for which Antonio Banderas landed the Best Actor Award. Penélope Cruz won best actress for Madres paralelas / Parallel Mothers (2021) in Venice, where La habitación de al lado / The Room Next Door (2024) carried off the Italian festival’s top award, the Golden Lion. Posterior to said film, programmed as the Donostia Award Screenings to follow last year’s gala dedicated to Almodóvar, is Amarga navidad, currently in development and which will be the twentieth full-length movie produced by Esther García for Pedro Almodóvar. She has also produced his short films La voz humana / The Human Voice (2020) and Extraña forma de vida / Strange Way of Life (2023).

El Deseo has always been known for giving a chance to moviemakers who were up and coming in their day, such as Álex de la Iglesia, Isabel Coixet, Daniel Calparsoro, Monica Laguna, Dunia Ayaso and Félix Sabroso and Belén Macías. The company has also backed the careers of big names in the world of Latin American film, like Guillermo del Toro, Lucrecia Martel, Damián Szifron, Pablo Trapero, Julia Solomonoff, Luis Ortega, Andrés Wood and Miguel Gonçalves Mendes. Outstanding amongst its recent productions is Sirāt (2025), for which Oliver Laxe garnered the Jury Prize at Cannes.

Amongst the myriad awards received by García are the National Cinematography Award, which she received in San Sebastián in 2018, the Silver Fotogramas in 2019 and six Goya Awards, three as the production director for Acción mutante / Mutant Action (Álex de la Iglesia, 1993), Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999) and La vida secreta de las palabras / The Secret Life of Words (Isabel Coixet, 2005), and three as a producer on Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006), Relatos salvajes / Wild Tales (Damián Szifron, 2014) and Dolor y gloria / Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar, 2019).

In addition, she has made a name for herself as a staunch feminist: a member of CIMA (Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media), she joined a large group of Spanish women producers to promote the joint documentary Yo decido. El tren de la libertad (Made in Spain, 2014) also having produced, amongst others, non-fictions such as Con la pata quebrada / Barefoot and in the Kitchen (Made in Spain, 2013) and Manda huevos (Official Selection Special Screenings, 2016), both directed by Diego Galán, as well as El silencio de los otros (2018), by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar.

Marisa Paredes, 50 years of ties with the San Sebastián Festival

Boasting extraordinary elegance and stage presence, Marisa Paredes (Madrid, 1946-2024) was involved in more than 75 feature films throughout a life’s work packed with complicated characters and enormous dramatic strength. Her career is associated to directors such as Fernando Trueba, Montxo Armendáriz, Jaime Chávarri, Agustí Villaronga and, above all, Pedro Almodóvar, for whom she worked on Entre tinieblas / Dark Habits (1983), Tacones lejanos / High Heels (1991), La flor de mi secreto / The Flower of My Secret (1995), Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (1999), Hable con ella / Talk to Her (2002) and La piel que habito / The Skin I Live In (2011). Outside Spain, Paredes also worked under the orders of filmmakers such as the Mexicans Arturo Ripstein and Guillermo del Toro, the Chilean Raúl Ruiz, the Italian Roberto Benigni and the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira.

Formed in the theatre and television of the 60s and 70s, the actress created strong ties with the San Sebastián Festival from her very first visit in 1977 as a cast member of El perro, the film by Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi which competed in the Official Selection. She later returned to the event with Tras el cristal / In a Glass Cage (Zabaltegi, 1986), by Agustí Villaronga; with Mientras haya luz (New Directors, 1987), by Felipe Vega, and with Trois vies et une seule mort / Three Lives and Only One Death, 1996, the work from Raúl Ruiz included in Perlak, as well as with Profundo carmesí (1996), by Arturo Ripstein.

She once again worked with the Mexican director on El coronel no tiene quien le escriba / No One Writes to the Colonel (Made in Spanish, 1999), followed by Salvajes / Savages (New Directors, 2001) by Carlos Molinero; El espinazo del diablo / The Devil’s Backbone (Made in Spanish, 2001) by Guillermo del Toro; Una preciosa puesta de sol / A Beautiful Sunset (Made in Spain, 2003) by Álvaro del Amo; Dans le rouge du couchant / Red Dusk (Official Selection, 2003) by Edgardo Cozarinsky; Frío sol de invierno / Cold Winter Sun (New Directors, 2004) by Pablo Malo, and Reinas (Made in Spain, 2005) by Manuel Gómez Pereira.

In the second decade of the 21st century she visited San Sebastián with As linhas de torres / The Lines of Wellington  (Zabaltegi-Especiales, 2012) by Raúl Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento; Querido Fotogramas (Made in Spain, 2018) by Sergio Oksman, and Petra (Perlak, 2018) by Jaime Rosales. Her final participation in the Festival was last year, months before her death at the age of 78, when she participated in Made in Spain on the cast of Alba Sotorra’s documentary, Mucha mierda / Break a Leg (2024).

National Cinematography Award in 1996, Honorary Goya in 2018 and President of the Film Academy from 2000 to 2003, Marisa Paredes was one of the grand dames of Spanish cinema and, as such, her strolls along the Festival’s red carpet and her appearances at its galas were frequent. In 1994, for example, she presented Javier Bardem with the Silver Shell for Best Actor, going on five years later to collect the FIPRESCI Prize on behalf of Almodóvar for Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother. She also presented the Donostia Awards to Ben Gazzara in 2005 and to Liv Ullman in 2007, whilst between both editions, in 2006, her image was forever associated to the Festival when she featured on the poster of its 54th edition, in the guise of Rita Hayworth in the Orson Welles classic The Lady from Shanghai.

Thus, as José Luis Rebordinos pointed out, this is the second time that Marisa Paredes will have featured on the Festival poster. “In 2006 as The Lady from Shanghai and now, nineteen years later, in a touchingly beautiful image reminding us of her excellence as an actress and as a person. And all this at an edition in which one of the Donostia Awards will go to an equally talented and intrepid woman with whom Marisa worked on several occasions, Esther García, a producer without whom it is impossible to understand the Spanish and Latin American cinema of the last 40 years. For both of these reasons, for this poster and for this award, we couldn’t be happier today”, he ended.

Recovery of posters from 1959 and 1971

The San Sebastián Festival continues to nourish its historic archive with new additions to its collection. Amongst the posters still to be recovered in perfect conditions were those of 1959 and 1971, corresponding to the seventh and nineteenth editions. The Festival has now purchased both posters from private collections in London and Madrid, respectively, having proceeded to digitally restore them following completion of the reconditioning and installation phase. 

The first of the posters is the work of Alfredo Tienda, produced by the Valverde printers in San Sebastián the same year as Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story (1959) carried off the Golden Shell, and the second, created by Navarro and printed in Madrid by Edicolour, corresponds to the edition in which Le genou de Claire (Claire’s Knee, 1971) by Éric Rohmer enjoyed its success.