Next September, the NGO Gehitu will present the SEBASTIANE AWARD to the film production which best reflects the reality, freedom and social progress of the LGBTI group. Celebrating its 17th edition this year, the mentioned award will be presented within the San Sebastian Film Festival which will take place between September 16th to 24th. On the “Horizontes Latinos” section of this festival, the winning film of the SEBASTIANE LATINO Award “Rara” (Chile), by Pepa San Martín, will also be screened.

We want to express our satisfaction for the great number of candidate movies to the award of which four will be part of the Official Section. To conclude, we would like to highlight that between September 19th to 21th, the 2nd International LGBTI Film Festivals Conference will also take place participating countries from Latin America and Spain. Such event, brought together with San Sebastian Film Festival and Spain’s Public Agency for Culture Action, tries to build links between the two continents as well as become a framework for reflection about the reality of this kind of festivals.

OFFICIAL SELECTION

As You Are, Miles Joris-Peyrafitte. USA

Jack is a high school student who lives with his single mother Karen in a nondescript suburban town. Considered a social outcast and loner, Jack is friendless until Karen’s new boyfriend Tom moves in and brings his son Mark into their lives. The two outsiders quickly bond and form a tight friendship and, after a chance encounter at a diner, bring fellow student Sarah into their group. The three teens become each other’s saving grace until changing relationships and emerging secrets force them to look at themselves and see how far they are willing to go to live the lives they choose.

Ikari / Rage, Sang-il Lee. Japan

On one wall of the room where the brutally murdered bodies lay in, the word “rage” has been spelled out in the blood of the victims. A year passes, but the murderer is not found. The case erodes people’s ability to “trust” in others, particularly that of three pairs of people in a fishing village, Tokyo, and Okinawa, who have recently befriended someone with a mysterious past. Beyond lost trust lies rage -an emotion apt to turn violent and expose, in unforeseen ways, the mystery behind a murder.

Jesús, Fernando Guzzoni, Chile-France-Germany-Greece

Santiago, Chile. Jesús, 18, lives alone with his father Hector in a flat where the TV covers up their inability to communicate. The rest of the time, he dances in a K-pop band, hangs out with friends and does drugs, watches trashy clips and has sex in public places, looking for a thrill. One night, he finds it with his friends, being involved in an irreversible misadventure.

Orpheline / Orphan, Arnaud Des Pallières. France

Four moments in the lives of four female characters. A little girl from the countryside, playing a game of hide and seek that turns to tragedy. A teenager, caught in an endless succession of runaways, men and mishaps, because anything is better than her desolate family home. A young woman who moves to Paris and has a brush with disaster. The grown-up at last, an accomplished woman, who thought she was safe from her own past. Gradually, these characters come together to form a single heroine.

NEW DIRECTORS

Bar Bahar / In Between, Maysaloun Hamoud. Israel-France

Salma, Laila and Nur will never fit in. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, they choose to live a life of freedom in Tel Aviv, away from their home villages. Each is looking for love, but as young Palestinian women they learn that a relationship of their choosing is not easy to fulfill. They have to choose their place, either in the city or in the village.

Yeon-ae-dam / Our Love Story, Lee Hyun-ju. South Korea

Yoon-ju is a graduate student of fine arts, who works petty part-time jobs to make ends meet and lives at her friend Young-eun’s place for a very small rent. Unlike Young-eun who enjoys having no-strings-attached relationships, Yoon-ju is just not into dating. One day, while she is searching materials for her project, she runs into Ji-soo at a junk shop. Watching Ji-soo in an odd place, Yoon-ju finds herself drawn to her.

HORIZONTES LATINOS

La región salvaje, Amat Escalante. Mexico-Denmak-France-Germany-Norway-Switzerland

Young mother Alejandra is a working housewife, raising two boys with her husband Angel in a small city. Her brother Fabien works as a nurse in a local hospital. Their provincial lives are upset with the arrival of the mysterious Veronica. Sex and love can be fragile in certain regions where strong family values, hypocrisy, homophobia and male chauvinism exist. Veronica convinces them that in the nearby woods, inside an isolated cabin, dwells something not of this world that could be the answer to all of their problems.

Rara. Pepa San Martín. Chile-Argentina

Since their parents split up, Sara and her younger sister live with their mother, whose new partner is a woman. Everyday life for the four of them is very similar to that of other families. But not everyone sees it that way. Her father in particular has his doubts.

Santa y Andrés, Carlos Lechuga. Cuba-France-Colombia

Cuba, 1983. Santa, a lonely country girl, is sent to keep an eye on Andrés, a gay writer in whom the Revolution has little “confidence”. Gradually these two people, apparently so very different from one another, realise that the things that bring them together are more important than those that separate them.

ZABALTEGI-TABAKALERA

O Ornitólogo / L’Ornithologue, Joao Pedro Rodrigues. Portugal-France-Brazil

Fernando, a solitary ornithologist, is looking for endangered black storks along a remote river in northern Portugal, when he is swept away by the rapids. Rescued by a couple of Chinese pilgrim girls on their way to Santiago de Compostela, he plunges into a dark, eerie forest, trying to get back on track. But as he encounters unexpected and uncanny obstacles and people who put him to the test, Fernando is driven to extreme, transformative actions. Gradually he becomes a different man: inspired, multifaceted, and finally enlightened.

Uncle Howard, Aaron Brookner. UK

Howard Brookner’s first film, Burroughs: The Movie, captured the cultural revolution of downtown New York City in the early ‘80s. Now in a personal journey, his nephew Aaron unearths Howard’s filmmaking legacy and the memory of everything he was.

OUT OF COMPETITION (Short films)

VELODROME

Kalebegiak (Narciso), Koldo Almandoz. Spain

Short film inside Kalebekiak. Kalebegiak integrates different short films, made by famous bask film makers, all of them dedicated to the city of San Sebastian. Koldo Almandoz, the film director with the highest presence in the short films folder in the history of Kimuak, proposes with “Narciso” a (self)critical look about the city of San Sebastián in a fantasy-science fiction genre story with a touch of humour. In the movie, a man from the future travels to a radiant and lush San Sebastián on year 2016 with a curious purpose which will not be revealed till the end of the film.

INTERNATIONAL FILM STUDENTS MEETING

Gabber Lover, Anna Cazenave-Cambet. France
Nérac in the early 2000s. Laurie and Mila, 13 years old, dance on Gabber music, on the shores of a remote lake. Mila is in love with Laurie and she wants to tell her.

O noapte in Tokoriki / A Night in Tokoriki, Roxana Stroe. Romania
In an improvised night club called “Tokoriki” the whole village celebrates Geanina’s 18th birthday. Her boyfriend and Alin will give her a most surprising gift, one that nobody will ever forget.