72nd San Sebastian Festival - 20/28 September 2023
71SSIFF - 22/30 September 2023
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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).
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Agenda
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Programme and tickets 
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New Directors
Films
Films
Jerzy Seipp
Poland
100 min.
Animation happens anywhere. It might also happen in Poland. There is a forest covered with snow, and in it is the house. "The writer" is living there, it seems that he has no human needs. There is also "the girl". Falling in love with him. And the wife, lover, or housekeeper. None of them ran through his veins. There is also "the theater". Only you can have the key. Strange at times, a bit surprising, poetic in its language and humor. I miss everything because it is a show close to Greek tragedies. It is also a film that deals with the difficulty of tenderness and that goes beyond love by talking about its non-existence. Antipsychological, with aggressive rock music, harsh erotic rituals, and our schizophrenia. In short, it deals with the hard times that we have had to live.
Rudolf van den Berg
The Netherlands
100 min.
Who can be my brother among six million?The fate of Paul de Wit, a forty-year-old history teacher, is enviable from several points of view. He has a happy family life together with his wife and his two children, a job he likes and he has been commissioned to write a book on the French Revolution. But this does not fully satisfy him, a strong ill-defined anxiety pervades every aspect of his existence.Paul travels to Paris to search for data for the book he must write. In this city he establishes a love relationship with a young Jewish student, to whom he tells that he was born in 1943 in hiding, and was the only member of his family to escape deportation, he never met his parents or his only brother.Back in Holland, he carefully looks at a photograph that he has taken of Nadine in the Bastille, discovering that just behind her a man is passing who is looking at him insistently. He makes some enlargements of that photograph, of the mysterious character and discovers his obsession with this stranger. He is finally convinced that it is his brother Philip, whom he believed to be missing.Animated by a hope that it is this one, Paul, leaving aside his ghosts and all his ties that unite him with everyday reality, goes in search of his brother.
Pierre Maillard
Switzerland
90 min.
Two people meet. They chase each other trying to love each other. Impulsive and idle, Anne flees Switzerland and settles in a deserted holiday camp. Silvio, a writer, lives nearby in a small room near the train tracks. The relationship between them is complicated by their respective obsessions, he with her writing work, she when she receives the news that her brother who lived in Geneva has died. Silvio, increasingly introverted, gradually becomes confused with his literary world and Anne tries to overcome her sorrows through a series of impulsive acts, crystallizing her obsession in the character of Palmer, her brother's friend, and whom she considers responsible for the death of his brother.She will try to locate him, without success. She just answers the answering machine. A group of characters are spectators of the comings and goings of their destinies, and little by little they become disrespectful views of the situation.Anne, after having incited Silvio to action and to commit a series of gratuitous acts, she abruptly decides to return to Geneva in search of Palmer. Parlmer in turn, received the messages, leaves in the direction of the vacation camp. Each one reaches the place of the other and in this way they return to themselves.
Ernst Witzel
Federal Republic of Germany
90 min.
Three friends: Timo, Werner and Lupus, who have studied in the same class, meet again fifteen years after finishing their studies. Euphoric from this meeting, recalling past stories, they plan to go on a crazy trip trying to reconnect with a past time and get closer to what each one is in the present. For three days they will travel together. The film deals with great realism of today's chronicle of West Germany, and of the time that has passed since May 1968 until today in the course of these fifteen years.Crazy things, entertainment at any price, but above all, having fun on behalf of the other.
Mary Jiménez
Belgium - Peru
85 min.
She had done the impossible to win her mother's love. She had been the first in school, she had learned to draw and play the piano, she had become an architect... she had done everything in order to forge an image according to her mother's desire. All. Until it ends up being another. Until madness. Until the madhouse. Everything he wanted other than her had led him to this.For the first time, she now has decided to follow her own wishes. She leaves architecture and comes to Europe to study film. She is convinced that now when her mother sees her movies, she will finally love her.But during the filming of her first film, her mother dies in an accident. That desire for love will not be fulfilled. It remains unanswered. Ten years later she has decided to tell that story in a film and she returns to Peru to meet the people and places with the camera as evidence.She was me ten years ago... her mother, mine.
José María Martín Sarmiento
Spain
105 min.
As if moved by the wind and chance, the bell of the hermitage of San Pelayo begins to ring insistently. This hermitage stands in the center of a wide valley. Attracted by the rhythmic and continuous ringing of the bell, the santero arrives and finds that it rings by itself. From the river that is born in that same place the water flows stained with blood.According to an ancient tradition, these are signs through which the saint in whose evocation the hermitage is raised asks to come and tell stories, through them to ward off a danger that threatens the region.The santero summons several local people, who, gathered for a whole night around the fire in the hermitage, tell stories about San Pelayo.
Celestino Coronado
Spain
68 min.
In the Kingdom of the Amazons, Duke Theseus kidnaps Queen Hippolyta. Already in his court, Theseus prepares the wedding with Hippolyta while the two loving couples fight and flee to the forest on Midsummer's Eve. there the fairies and goblins meet in a clearing, having fun under the baton of the pixie Puck, chasing the page of Titania, queen of the fairies. Oberon and Titania fight over the possession of the page. Oberon, rejected, promises to take revenge on Titania with a love potion. Meanwhile, the louts rehearse the comedy they are to represent to celebrate the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.After the misunderstandings caused by the love filter, the pairs of lovers find their harmony. Oberon and Titania reconcile under Puck's wry gaze.After the painful representation of Romeo and Juliet by the louts, the fairies invade the place, blessing the nuptial bed of the three couples.
Juan Carlos Desanzo
Argentina
87 min.
En retirada is a fictional story that narrates how an individual immersed in the parapolice apparatus, defends himself for continuing to carry out his activity as a torturer in a pre-democratic situation, rejected by the police establishment itself and by society.
Iñaki Aizpuru
Spain
90 min.
Two friends, 'freelance' television reporters, live together. Imanol is the cameraman and Javi the sound technician, and they cover the information on Euskadi during the years 1980-81.They also carry out diverse and varied reports, helped by a television presenter and documentary filmmaker, creating bonds of friendship between them. They come to consider making a fictional film, outside of the TV channels for which they work.However, the fact of working for information, closely following the events in Euskadi, the ETA attacks, and the climate they create in their environment, cloud the friendship of Imanol and Javi. The different ideological conceptions of the two characters become stronger and stronger, leading to discussions and confrontations. The contradictions are becoming more and more acute.The dramatic events of February 1981 (Ryan's death, Joseba Arregi's death, 23-F), not only caused a change in the political situation, they also removed some foundations.
Sergio García
France
Short film
A group of puppeteers arrives in Paris and before their eyes the world transforms into a dream world in the style of their theater.
Not in competition
Henri Gruvman
France
15 min.
Short film
An imaginary trip to the country where dreams are reality and reality becomes a dream.
Not in competition
Didier Martiny
France - Portugal
85 min.
The night. The sea... a sandy beach protected by cliffs. Jusqu'à la nuit is inspired by the moral question of desire. How civilized people manage and mess up in a situation founded on uncontrollable emotion. At a mundane party, Renaud meets Simra. Brutal and shared desire. Louis appears, a man from the deranged past who is upset by this present.
Pavel Chukhray
USSR
77 min.
Olesia and Viktor are in this difficult moment for people to cross the threshold from youth to adulthood. Will these teenagers make their dreams come true and become the people they want to be? It all depends on how they manage to get out of the situations and complications in which they find themselves.Viktor, being carried away by others, commits a robbery. A robbery that has its poetic side. He steals a cage of canaries from a lover of these songbirds. Faced with the imminence of a punishment that is coming, he decides to flee. He goes to the Riga post to hire himself as a sailor on some small ship. At the railway station he meets Olesia, who has run away from home after a fight with her stepfather. She is at the station waiting for her father to whom he has sent a telegram.Viktor and Olesia will spend the entire batch together on the platform. They will live a series of adventures, they will discuss many things together, they will think about making decisions that are not entirely easy for them. Viktor will confess to the robbery and Olesia will return to her family.
Philippe Muyl
France
95 min.
A young French geologist, Mathieu, moves to a small deserted Greek island to study a petrified tree.Little by little, despite himself, he lets himself be carried away by the magical atmosphere of the island and especially by Eleni, a wild girl who seems to have been born from the sea. The more he wants her, the more she slips away from her.Soon Mathieu will discover her secret. In a cave, sheltered from all eyes, she and a dolphin engage in fascinating love games. It is now that Mathieu must choose. Depart, or accept this reality that escapes reason and gives life to the legend.
Richard Eyre
United Kingdom
96 min.
It is a contemporary romantic comedy that recalls those delicious comedies from the forties in which the sex battles starring the Tracy-Hepburn tandem were fought.Sally, an attractive middle-class feminist, is forced to share a car ride from London to Munich with Harry. This is the prototype of a macho with chauvinistic attitudes, and with a practical inability to solve any situation. The couple finds themselves in a multitude of situations on a crazy, memorable trip, in which they travel all over Europe to make the trip. It is certainly an experience that neither of them will forget.
Ève Bonfanti
Belgium
85 min.
It's a film about an old lady. A daily story that the camera portrays and shows us her dreams, her despair, all so that we see the days go by slowly, inexorably, waiting for the ultimate destination. It also shows us the look of this old lady on a fast world such as life in 1984. The action takes place on two stages, on the one hand Brussels, on the other the city of Spa.
Valeria Sarmiento
France - Portugal
90 min.
Lola, who is seven years old, is seriously ill. At her bedside the doctor tells her father, Salvador, that she will only be saved from her if she undergoes an expensive operation. The life of her daughter or her honor is what she has to decide on this sad afternoon. A childless couple, Lorenzo and Marcelina, offer to pay. Salvador after doubts accepts, when the girl is out of danger he gives her up for adoption, but not before telling her that he is not her real father. Her parents are now rich, and her brothers, who have become mere cousins, refuse to play with her. Lola is bored. Years go by, and on the occasion of Lorenzo's birthday, Lola dedicates a love poem to him. Marceline dies. The real parents, for what they will say, tell Lola the reality, and they want her to return to her real family. Lorenzo leaves for a trip. Lola at Marcelina's grave establishes a complicity with her: "be happy mom, I'm staying to guard our man's house."When Lorenzo returns, Lola proposes that they get married. A white marriage. They will continue to behave like father and daughter. Two years pass. One day Lorenzo tells her that he wants her. She refuses. The next night she will accept it. The next day Lola and Salvador are going to visit Lola's family, taking a horseback ride. At a certain moment Lola tells Salvador: "I love you so much dad."
Francesca Comencini
Italy
102 min.
It is the love story of two drug addicts. Paolo and María have decided to break their ties with heroin, they cannot resign themselves to not being able to establish a daily story of that love together, despite being surrounded by syringes and suffering "the monkey". After desperately seeking to stay together, Paolo and Maria are separated in the cruelest way imaginable: death. Paolo, indeed, unable to overcome the drug, decides to commit suicide. María is left alone in the middle of the film but then she already has decided; she is going to live, with him or without him.
Patricia Russell
USA
90 min.
The film begins with a boy and ends with a woman. There is an understanding between the two, a certain complicity. It is the story of a person struggling to find himself, with sad moments, and at times very funny. It is above all a process of slow and almost agonizing change of search, of travel... It is a film about a young woman of today, and the struggle she has to endure to find herself. She is a woman in the process of change. Within this context the battle of the sexes is ignored. A person is just a person.The protagonist is involved in a destructive context. Her parents are locked in a circle of mutual destruction. Her marriage to a young man is hopeless. But other people will become part of her life, helping her to destroy these "bad vibrations" around her. If she has the courage and the ability to learn from the painful processes, it happens that the good comes after this human and sincere effort.
Jonathan Demme
USA
88 min.
Stop Making Sense is a chronicle of the climate reached in the last tour of the group Talking Heads. The film has been made in close collaboration between the group's leader David Byrne, director Jonathan Demme, and cinematic expert Jordan Cronenweth. Demme has created a multimedia extravaganza out of each of the musical tracks, from "Once in a Lifetime" to "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)."Three members of the group (Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tima Weymouth) met as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, and guitarist Jerry Harrison hails from the Harvard School of Architecture. the group maintains a constant interest in the world of Art, Theater and Design, to create the visual aspects of their performances. His music is part of contemporary American pop currents, ranging from "techno" to the so-called "new music" of New York. Stop Making Sense was shot at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, and is the first musical film where digital technology has been used live and on recording. Six cameras have been used, including the Panaglide. A video system could follow the footage live, so Demme, Cronenweth, and visual consultant Sandy McCleod could monitor the entire footage. The film is viewed in 35mm Dolby Stereo.
Not in competition
Pawel Karpinski
Poland
90 min.
Sylwia, at the beginning of her career as a rock singer, gives concerts at a youth cultural center, where she sings accompanied by a band led by her boyfriend, Janek.She falls in love with a famous writer, Marczak, who decides to promote her. Sylwia prepares under his orders to debut at a rock music festival. She takes dance classes, changes her makeup, consults a couture designer, and before long, she enters show business, leaving the cultural center and Janek with her little band.During a party given by Majka Lencweska, a singer returning after having a nervous breakdown, Marczak asks Majka's husband to write a song for Sylwia. Lenczweski agrees, under the condition that Marczak appears as the author of the song, otherwise he will not enter the festival where Lenczweski is on the jury.The Festival begins, Sylwia sings the song and wins the prize; but she realizes that the song is plagiarized and during the festival, which is broadcast on TV, she tells the public the truth. When she ends the festival, she and Janek sing a song together.
Teodoro Escamilla
Spain
103 min.
In their spare time, after their studies or work, children and adolescents come together to learn to fight bulls. In their stomachs there is no hunger like in the past, their dreams do not lie in having farmhouses, their desires are far from wanting to be famous. His dream is only to be in front of the bull.Their impatience, the arrival of the "maletilla" that recounts their experiences, make them want to leave the car with horns, to embark on the adventure of facing, as they call it, "the one with the black legs".One of the students leaves his home. His father prohibited him from engaging in bullfighting where he had failed. The father asks one of the teachers to find his son. The bullfighter returns home. A bullfight is organized and he is the great winner.Luis Miguel, the son of Pedro "el banderillero" continues his ascending career, while at school everything remains the same.The news arrives that he wants to leave bullfighting. The old professor must intervene once more.After a conversation, the old teacher will return to the ring to give his best student the alternative.
Juan Antonio de la Riva
Mexico
90 min.
Two men, in the manner of wandering knights, travel through the most remote corners, the most remote places in the Sierra de Durango, carrying a projector and rolls of film in their truck to carry through the cinema, a show to fulfill their beautiful job as "dream dealers". More than entertainment, these films become role models, as a lifestyle that works as an element of national cohesion: The valiant but romantic 'Charro', the frivolous and also self-sacrificing party, the love frustrations, everything projected in the semi-darkness of an improvised room, school, factory or outdoors.Walking these trails, these two men know love, they face danger and tragedy, but they also know a supreme value in life: friendship and solidarity in the face of misfortune.
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