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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Official Section
Films
Films
Alan Rudolph
USA
113 min.
Repair contractor Lucky Mann is used to having the odd ex-marital affair with lonely housewives while their husbands are out. This time the woman in question is Marianne, the frustrated wife of self-possessed and polished businessman Jeffrey Byron. But Lucky's marriage to Phyllis, a former B-movie actress, is half-way onto the rocks anyway. Jeffrey and Phyllis are guided by the hand of fate when they separately tail their respective partners to their hotel rendevous and end up bumping into each other instead. Things will never be the same after the different encounters.
Marcelo Piñeyro
Argentina
127 min.
The story stars with two deaths. The first is that of the Judge Costa Makantasis, who falls off the Courthouse terrace. The second is that of ana Muro, a 22-year old woman whose body is found riddled with stab wounds that same night at the Judge's house. Each of latter's three sons claims to have murdered the young woman. A colleague of the Judge, Ms. teller, will have to solve the case and discover the truth by unravelling the Makantasis brother's web of intrigue and establishing the links between the two deaths.
Andreas Gruber
117 min.
Simon Granderath has been found dead in his apartment. His only daughter, Monika, who lives in Luxembourg, arrives to arrange he funeral and settle his state, only wanting to get back to normal life as soon as possible. However, she soon becomes aware of the fact that she hardly knew her father at all and tries to trace the various stages and encounters of his life; realising that her investigation into her father's life has really become an attempt to find her own identity.
Mario Camus
Spain
115 min.
This is the story of a big old house in a tiny Cantabrian village that has been left to a middle-age woman, Lola, by the widower who loved her dearly during the last years of his life. The claims to the property by the man's son and heir, Mateo, and his long-standing aversion to the woman, condition the ensuing events and the reactions of the people around her: her niece Clementina, Colo the poacher fisehrman, Valerio the lawyer, a band of smugglers... and two children, one Spanish and the other Bosnian, who have become part of their lives. The former feels unwanted and rejected by his parents and impersonated the personality of the latter, who comes from a world of war, violence and hatred.
William Nicholson
UK
103 min.
Two strangeres, a beautiful Swiss governess and an English landowner, meet for three days in northern France to carry out the terms of a secret business agreement. He will giver her money to pay her father's debts and in return she will give him a child. The desire unexpectedly awakened by this encounter draws them together sever years later, when whithout his knowledge, she is hired as the governess to their daughter.
John Sayles
USA
128 min.
Fuentes is a rich doctor who lives in the city, ignorant of the brutal history of his country. Provoked by an encounter with one of his former students, he travels out of the city to find the other students he trained to work as rural doctors and finds evidence that ther have been murdered by "men with guns". Conejo, an abandoned child, becomes his guide. They are joined by Domingo, a deserted from the army, and Portillo, a priest who has lost his faith. The strange family is competed by Graciela, mute since she was raped by soldiers. They finally reach Cerca del Cielo, a pathetic village hidden in the jungle.
Paddy Breathnach
Ireland
107 min.
Git is released from jail and immediately finds himself in trouble when he is forced to accept an illegal job by capo tom French. He is given a partner, Bunny, a man so depraved he has knocked off his own grandfather. Everything goes wrong when they cross moors and swamos, trapped by Frank Grogan, the world's most talkative hostage. From the moment Bunny and Git's turbulent relationship starts turning into friendship, they hace to face a enormour moral dilemma... shich seems to be hiding something suspiciously looking like money.
Xavier Durringer
France
117 min.
François, the wild young son of a local Godfather, escapes unhurt from a crossfire after having pulled off his first successfil hit and asks a friend of his father for protection. He gets Rufin, a young thug, as a bodyguard. But François and Rufin are thrown into a dangerous gang fight, in an atmosphere of after-hour bars in underworld Paris, where life really isn't worth that much.
Luis Buñuel
France - Italy
98 min.
With Diary of a Chambermaid I wanted to look at the provincial French bourgeoisie’s mentality and morality in the 30’s. It’s bourgeoisie morale I find immoral, that’s what we’ve got to fight against. Morale based on our terribly unjust social institutions, like religion, fatherland, the family, culture, in short, the so-called “mainstays of society”. With respect to Diary of a Chambermaid, I think it contains a lot of the subjects that come most naturally to me and which reflect my truest interests.Luis Buñuel, quoted in Luis Buñuel, Obra cinematográfica, by Agustín Sánchez Vidal.
Adrian Lyne
France
140 min.
Refined, brilliant and highly attractive to women, Humbert Humber hides the memory of his thwarted childhood love for a girl called Annabel, who died of an illness. Shattered by the incident, its memory has followed him into adult life. Years later, he moves to New England as a professor. Taking lodgings with Charlotte, a voluptuous widow, Humbert only has eyes for her daughter, Lolita, a twelve-year-old who reminds him of Annabel. While the mother does her best to seduce him, Humbert turns his charms on Lolita. With the desired effect. Setting off through the United States with his unusual partner, Humbert soon sees the paradise of his dreams turning to Hell.
Not in competition
Adolfo Aristarain
Spain - Argentina
135 min.
Argentinian film director Martín Echenique has been living in madrid for more than twenty years. Although his son was also named Martín in keeping with family tradition, everyone calls him H (Hache - name of the letter H in Spanish) to tell them apart. Nineteen-year-old Hache lives in Buenos Aires with his mother and neither studies or works; preferring to spend his time on the streets playing guitar. When his mother remarries, she sends him off to Madrid, where he meets Alicia, Martín's lover, and Dante, his best friend and actor. Martín shares his life with exciting people, but wants absolutely nothing to do with personal emotions. People who love can get hurt, and the very idea of it brings him out in a cold sweat.
Marleen Gorris
USA
100 min.
One summer's day in the London of 1923, Clarissa Dalloway remembers the summer of 1890 in the countryside when she was young, beautiful and much sought after. Enthusiastically putting the finishing touches to the party to be held that same night at her London house, her plans are interrupted by the sudden return of the handsome suitor she rejected all these thirty years ago. Her life suddenly runs into that of a young boy she had never in fact actually seen, but whose destiny awakens a heartfelt truth she can no longer deny.
Opening Film
P. J. Hogan
USA
102 min.
Inseparable since university, Julianne and Michael made a deal: if they hadn't found partners by the time they were 28, they'd marry each other. At the time, they were just kidding... or did one of them really mean it? When the two of them turn 28, Michael pops "the big question". The only problem is that he asks someone else - the marvellous Kimmy, who also just happens to be dirty rich. Julianne realises she's never really known what she's wanted until it's almost gone, and that she's only got four days and her wits to get Michael back.
Not in competition
Peter Sehr
Germany - France
104 min.
Miriam plays the trumpet in an all-woman band in Berlin. She is in love with Pierre, a French scientist, but she also falls in love with John, a stonemason and Zimbabwean citizen brought up in England. Miriam loves Pierre with all her heart, but can't hide her feelings for John. Jacob Frischmuth is an old Jewish sailor, who, along with his brother Simon, is fascinated by an atractive widow, Elle Beckmann. Between the three of them, they make a discobery that allows them to help Miriam, Pierre and John, the trio of young lovers.
Roman Chalbaud
Venezuela
90 min.
In a slum, Adonai, a footless poet, transmits news, music and recites poetry on radio Pandemonium, using a lodspeaker located on the roof of the old abandoned building. He lives with his mother, Carmín, and Demetria, "The Bitch", who was taken in as a child and is now his lover. Carmín prefers her other child, Radamés, who is in jail for being corrupt, and who gives her a briefcase filled with money, which Demetria urges Onésimo and Hermes, the two street boys who are in love with her, to rob.
Claude Chabrol
France - Switzerland
105 min.
A strange surrealistic couple of small-time swindlers travelling around France in a caravan, Víctor and Betty are dismayed to find themselves caught up in an international money trafficking scam. Enter the "serious side" of this entertaining comedy: misunderstandings, tricks and recurring situations taking them from Switzerland to the Caribbean in an attempt to track down a briefcase stuffed with money.
Lavinia Currier
USA
93 min.
Augustin, one of Bonaparte's soldiers in the ill-fated Egyptian campaign, guides Venture, an artist across the desert to draw and record ancient monuments. Attacked by Malalukes and Bedouins, and battered by a violent sandstorm, the two men lose their bearings in the desert. Weak and almost blind, the artist kills himself. augustin crawls into a cave to spend the night and when he awakes, he is terrifies to find that he is in the lair of a leopard. To his surprise, the animal protects and befriends him, sharing her food and home with him.
Steve Box
UK
10 min.
A former music-hall dog juggling star finds himself obsolete on the coming of cinema and has to face up to the change, while his partner to date becomes a silent movie star. An animated tale told with the characteristic Aardman sense of humour.
Not in competition
Closing Film
David Fincher
USA
131 min.
High-powered businessman, Nicholas Van Orton, receives the birthday gift of a lifetime from the brother he has too long ignored. What he gives him in entry to a mysterious new kind of game. It proves to be an all-consuming contest with only one rule: there are no rules. By the time Van Orton realises he is in too deep, it is already too late to get out.
Not in competition
Mark Peploe
France - UK - Germany
98 min.
When Axel Heyst, the solitary resident of a tropical island impulsively rescues the beautiful Alma from virtual slavery in Ziangiacomo's All Ladies Travelling Orchestra, he incurs the wrath of jealous hotel keeper Schomberg. Fuelled by his own desire for the girl, and wanting his revenge on Heyst, Schomberg dispatches three strangers to Samburan. Their unwelcome intrusion on this island Eden robs Heyst and alma their chance of happiness, and leaves tragedy in its wake.
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