San Sebastian Film Festival
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Illness and Empathy: San Sebastian Film Festival 2024
If San Sebastian Film Festival director José Luis Rebordinos ever wanted to choose a poster child for how the new voices of today can become the established veterans of tomorrow, he could do a lot worse than Pedro Almodóvar, whose debut Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom played at the festival back in 1980. At this year’s 72nd edition, during which Almodóvar turned 75, he was back in the northern Spanish coastal city to receive a lifetime Donostia Award and show his latest film, The Room Next Door. At the award ceremony, Almodóvar was given the prize by […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Oct 2, 2024 -
The Public Experience: San Sebastian International Film Festival 2023
There’s something fittingly appropriate about the way that The Spirit Of The Beehive director Victor Erice became the first Basque director to receive a lifetime achievement Donostia Award at the 71st San Sebastian Festival, while the Golden Shell for Best Film also went to San Sebastian-born Jaione Camborda for The Rye Horn, which is scripted in Galician and Portuguese. It encapsulates not just the way that the old meets the new at the festival but how, under José Luis Rebordinos’s directorship since 2011, it has continued to champion home-grown voices and non-hegemonic languages. Erice brought Close Your Eyes, his first film […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Oct 3, 2023 -
San Sebastian Film Festival at 70
It might have been notching up its 70th birthday, but rather than reminisce about the past San Sebastian continues to focus on new voices, as evidenced by a set of award winners full of up- and-coming talent. Though the festival on Spain’s northern Basque Country coast managed to continue during the pandemic, this year was the first time since 2019 that a real sense of normality resumed. That meant more guests were able to return as restrictions eased—including David Cronenberg and Juliette Binoche, both picking up life-time achievement Donostia Awards—while masks were no longer required in cinemas. Picking up his […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Sep 26, 2022 -
San Sebastián International Film Festival 2021: Three Films from the Spanish-Speaking World
Despite the accolade of being an “A category” festival, whatever that may mean, San Sebastián International Film Festival is not necessarily somewhere many major filmmakers choose to launch their film. Though it does host some premieres as well as significant industry activity, the priority is on pleasing a public—who, it should be said, generally seemed very pleased. Following a nervier, much less well-attended in-person edition held last year, almost all screenings sold out, with ticket touts often found flogging price-hiked spares outside of venues, and people seemed very happy to be out and about, seeing highlights from the year’s other […]
by Matt Turner on Oct 5, 2021 -
“I Have Not Seen My Film with Anyone Other than Two People”: Dea Kulumbegashvili on Beginning
Dea Kulumbegashvili should have had the year of her life. At any other moment, the Tbilisi-based writer/director would have already travelled to Cannes, Toronto and San Sebastián to screen her new film for festival audiences. A remarkable accomplishment for anyone, let alone a young director with a first feature, the success of Beginning has instead been a strange, bittersweet ride. In the absence of sold-out screenings and sponsored afterparties, the festival experience in 2020 has given way to far less glamorous rituals: Zoom Q&As, geo-locked streaming links and the solitary act of viewing from home. For Kulumbegashvili, 34, the process […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Sep 28, 2020 -
Paxton Winters’s Aronofsky-Produced Pacified Wins Top Prize at San Sebastian; Other Dramas Explore Franco’s Legacy and the Spanish Civil War
San Sebastian has always been a place where the past meets the present with some finesse, its Art Nouveau buildings nestling happily next to the angular lines of the film festival’s main Kursaal auditorium, opened in 1999 and intended to mimic “two beached rocks.” This mix of energy is reflected in the audiences who attend, often seen snacking on a glass of wine and one of the city’s traditional pintxo canapes as they patiently queue for the cinema, and who generally break out into a round of spontaneous hand-clapping as the festival’s jazzy introduction plays before each film. History seemed […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Sep 29, 2019 -
“Everything We Could Embrace about Motherhood Happened Through the Making of this Movie”: Director Ash Mayfair on Her Vietnam-Set Debut, The Third Wife
The Third Wife marks the ambitious debut of Vietnamese director Ash Mayfair, who gained her MFA from NYU. Set in the late 19th century, her film tracks the fortunes of 14-year-old Mây (Nguyễn Phương Trà My), who is selected as the third wife of a much older man, who expects her to bear him a son. Her life in rural Vietnam becomes further complicated as she begins to develop feelings for the second wife Xuân (Mai Thu Hường) and as pressure builds in the family. Shot by Chananun Chotrungroj (Pop Aye, Hotel Mist), the film largely uses natural light and […]
by Amber Wilkinson on May 17, 2019 -
“I Don’t Think Reconciliation is Possible”: Benjamín Naishtat on Rojo, ’70s Filmmaking and Living in a Right-Wing Zombieland
A charcoal-black comedy about the early days of the Argentinean Dirty War, Benjamin Naishtat’s third feature Rojo accumulated a small but devout critical following after its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, then went on to win Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Actor last week at San Sebastian. Naishtat’s 2014 debut History of Fear questioned the companionability of day-to-day life with lingering, suppressed trauma, while his black-and-white followup The Movement cast a brutally acerbic eye to 19th century nation-building in the Pampas, satirizing the belief (perennial in Latin America and other places) that a strong autocrat can bring order and stability, […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Oct 1, 2018 -
A Pledge Towards Gender Equality at the 2018 San Sebastian Film Festival
The issue of gender equality in filmmaking was placed front and center by San Sebastian Film Festival this year as the festival signed the Charter for Parity and Inclusion of Women in Cinema. The initiative, which began in Cannes, requires the festival festival to commit to inclusivity, including producing a raft of statistics about female-led submissions and programming as well as having an equal number of men and women on the festival’s selection committee from next year—and it’s worth noting that its management committee already comprises four women and three men. During the course of this 2018 edition of the […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Oct 1, 2018 -
Family Fortunes, Hard Choices and Master Manipulators: High Notes from the 2017 San Sebastian Film Festival
Last year, it was possible to pick up a bar snack named after Monica Bellucci during the San Sebastian Film Festival; this year cinemagoers at the most prominent event in the Spanish-speaking film world could see the real deal, as the actress arrived in town to pick up a Donostia Award for lifetime achievement. Ahead of the ceremony, she said: “I think that to receive a prize is not just a matter of ego, but a matter of love… My work is a way to know myself better.” Bellucci was one of a clutch of stars on the red carpet […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Oct 2, 2017
