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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Zabaltegi - New Directors
Films
Films
Srdan Golubovic
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
96 min.
Sasa, a junior marksmanship champion of Yugoslavia preparing for the forthcoming World Junior Championship in Paris idolises his ex-world champion brother, Igor. During the war in Croatia and Bosnia, Igor had replaced his rifle for a sniper and ended up returning as a heroin addict. Watching Igor being beaten up yet again, Sasa decides to take justice into his own hands and to kill all of the people he thinks are responsible for his brother's fall. Realizing that Sasa is behind the murders, Igor takes the blame and ends up committing suicide. Sasa, crushed by his brother's death, decides despite everything to continue competing.
Pasquale Marrazzo
Italy
90 min.
August in suburban Milan. The restless young Gianni can't stand the fact that his twin brother is locked away in a centre for the handicapped. His father Anselmo, a poorly paid worker, has had neither the money nor the desire to look after them since his wife's death. Gianni gets the money to take care of himself by working at a petrol station, sharing his free time between the brother he loves so dearly and his girlfriend Betty. Obsessed with the idea of bringing Moreno home, Gianni sees his plans go down the drain when his father signs the boy away to temporary foster parents. He knows that the only way to stop the adoption from going through is to get his hands on big money, and fast.
Christophe Otzenberger
France
93 min.
Arrested for dealing in hashish, Yann, Céline and Léna are sentenced to 4 months in prison plus the prohibition of staying in Paris or its region for a period of two years, during which they have to resume an ordinary social life: they've got to find a job, a place to stay... They move into a village in the region of Corrèze where they have to obey the judge's orders. They've got to prove that they've changed and that they are fit to rejoin society.
Gerardo Tort
Mexico
85 min.
15-year-old Rufino lives in the streets of Mexico City where he makes a bit of money doing odd jobs and secretly selling drugs for Seño and Ochoa, a corrupt police officer who controls the neighbourhood in which they live. One day something happens and Rufino pockets Ochoa's money, unleashing the policeman's relentless persecution and harassment in the process. While planning his escape from the city with his girlfriend Xochitl, Rufino discovers that his father is still alive. Obsessed with the idea of finding his progenitor before leaving, Rufino sets off on a search leading from love to loneliness, from drugs to friendship, from solidarity to betrayal and the absurd death of those who have nothing.
Michiel Van Jaarsveld
Netherlands
90 min.
While 15-year-old Sammy has recently become aware of the effect she has on men, the only one towards whom she herself feels any attraction is her older brother Jacob. With an institutionalised father and a mother neither sibling has seen for years, Jacob cares for his little sister with a smothering dedication leaving her no room to mature as a woman. In a bid to express and exercise her burgeoning sexuality, Sammy seduces her best friend's father. The dice has been cast and inevitable momentum draws sister and brother into an unavoidable and ultimately intolerable union. Sammy realises the need to take responsibility for her behaviour, a decision implying the most personal of sacrifices.
Beto Gomez
Spain
102 min.
Good-for-nothing petty criminal, Iñaki, discovers on reading a letter from his father who had fled two years previously to Mexico, that his mother has been lying to them both. A failed holdup finally obliges him to follow in his progenitors's footsteps and hot-foot it across the sea. This is the tale of a meeting and a lie that will trap Iñaki and take him to a country full of contrasts, a lively, magical and most surrealistic of Mexico's. Not very sure how, he ends up forming part of a perilous dream. Way beyond the vast expanse of sea separating Mexico and Spain and of potential resentment dating from the Conquest, appear the value of friendship and of family ties; a few guys with not a lot of luck and an upstream life will fight against any odds to achieve that special dream... the caiman's dream.
Peter Naess
Norway
90 min.
After a two-year stint at a psychiatric hospital, Elling is set to return to the so-called ?real world?. He and his roommate, Kjell Bjarne, have been allocated an apartment in Oslo with instructions to take care of themselves. For someone who finds making his way across a restaurant as difficult as crossing the Antartic Ocean, this new life is plagued with obstacles. With enormous willpower (not forgetting the threat of being sent back to the clinic), Elling and Kjell hesitatingly make their way down unfamiliar roads. When Kjell meets a woman, situations occur in which these frightened young men are forced to give all they've got - and then some.
Naguel Belouad
Algeria
83 min.
Married to Nakla and Gamra, who have failed to bear him children, the aging Brahim decides to marry Fadah, a beautiful, healthy twenty-year-old woman, hoping a third wife will provide him with an heir. Forced to marry Brahim, Fadah joins the other two wives in a household cut off from the rest of the world. Under no condition can the women leave the house. Only Brahim has contact with the community... Until the day he hires a young man, Hemna, to do work on the property. A few months later, Fadah shows all the signs of a pregnant woman.
Peter Callahan
USA
96 min.
High School is over, and everybody in the small town just up the Hudson from New York City has made plans and moved on; everybody except Jim. While his buddies head off to one Ivy League college or another, Jim takes a job driving for the local cab company, which allows him plenty of free time to hang out, drink with the locals at ?John's Bar & Grill? and think back on the love affair with a married woman that, for the exquisite moment it lasted, brought passion and meaning to his life.
Mansour Sora Wade
France
90 min.
South coast of Senegal. A strange fog lying over a fishermen's village for too many days has the villagers worried when it prevents the boats from going out to fish while creating an atmosphere of fear and superstition in which two young childhood friends, Yatma and Mbanick, both fall in love with Maxoye. It's also the situation in which the girl's rejection of Yatma pushes the boy to murder his friend and rival. Pressed by the community, Maxoye accepts to marry the culprit and avenge Mbanick's death. But another, far more surreptitious, revenge is making its way in from the sea.
Tomas Gislason
Denmark
107 min.
Although the Danish couple Kamilla and Henrik have come to Las Vegas to get married, she gets second thoughts half way through the ceremony and hot-foots it out of the place, catapulting herself onto the back of Rock's motorbike in the doing. Abandoned by the biker in Los Angeles and convincing Henrik to pick her up, Kamilla jumps at another chance to move on before he gets there. This second flight leads to her kidnap, from which she is once again freed by Rock, who just happens to be in the right place at the right time. Embarking on a journey towards San Francisco and Seattle, Kamilla gradually seems to discover the reason for Rock's voyage and its perilous goal.
Petr Vaclav
Czech Republic - France - Netherlands
100 min.
Story about the end of a relationship. He's over thirty-five, she's twenty-eight. They've been together for quite a long time: six, maybe eight years. They've influenced each other a lot, have in common a deep world of shared experiences. But life now attracts them in different ways, pulling them in different directions... Why? Maybe you know, maybe you've lived through the same thing. Petr Václav also uses this study of relationship between a man and a woman to describe the atmosphere in the Czech Republic and the values of his generation.
Carlos Molinero
Spain
98 min.
Today. The Mediterranean coast. The genuine hope of a better life pushes waves of illegal immigrants to flee the African continent. Berta, a nurse, searches in the harbour dens of iniquity for the happiness she refuses to relinquish. Eduardo, a police inspector new to the city tries to drown the despair of his illness and his job. The two meet, giving in to a wild love story threatened by Berta's three conflictive relatives: Lucía, smitten by an unsavoury sort who deals in illegal immigrants; and the boys, Guillermo and Raúl, the sidekicks of violent skinheads. The police investigation following the brutal beating up of a Senegalese man creates yet another obstacle for the relationship between all of the characters involved.
Tomasz Thomson
Germany
93 min.
Young Anne lives in her own apartment in a large city where she searches for love despite not knowing what it is. Four men cross the girl's path and leave their marks on her life. Her existence in the city is a reflection on being lonely in a crowd, of being motionless in movement. But Anne wants to escape. And in her heart a silent storm rages.
María Lidón (Luna)
Spain
101 min.
The first manned mission to Mars, a joint NASA/ESA effort, is about to touch down as planned when it crashes onto the surface of the planet. Five of its six astronauts survive. They all immediately understand that the situation is desperate: the return journey to Mars takes a minimum of 500 days and only one mission can be sent every 26 months. The rescue team would take at least three years to arrive, but they only have air, energy and food for a few months.
Robert Connolly
Australia - Italy
104 min.
Jim Doyle is a maths genius searching for a formula that can predict future stock market crashes. The potential in his software fires the imagination and greed of Simon O'Reilly, Centabank's CEO, who's freewheeling management style and negative performance are under attack. O'Reilly lures Jim to work for his company, where, with endless money and resources to play with, Jim perfects his theory, assuring Simon that they will have total market domination in a single day. The witching hour on 25th October finally triggers the biggest stock market crash ever and Jim launches his ballistic disc with Centabank's future in his hands.
Luis Eduardo Aute
Spain
90 min.
Animation feature film entirely drawn in pencil by Luis Eduardo Aute, Un perro llamado Dolor (El, artista y su modelo) is a libertarian fantasy based on the life and works of the painters reconsidered, namely, Goya, Sorolla, Frida Kahlo, Picasso, Dalí and Velázquez. The film was started in 1996, giving an idea of the painstaking process involved in creating this authentic author work, conceived as an inseparable whole by this polymorphic artist.
Fito Paez
Argentina
97 min.
After almost 20 years in Europe, Carmen Uranga rushes back to Buenos Aires to be with her dying father. At 42, Carmen is cold, distant and practical, an impassibility with which she has tried to erase the traumatic situation caused by her exile. During her stay in Buenos Aires, Carmen leads a double life: she lives in the family home, and rents a flat where she pays couples to let her listen while they make love in the next door room. It's her only pleasure since the horror of captivity. Carmen is bewitched by the voice of Gustavo, a young boy whom she first hires in a couple with a girl and, later, by himself. As the relationship between Carmen and Gustavo progresses, Carmen's young sister Carmen comes closer to an atrocious, unconfessable truth.
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