72nd San Sebastian Festival - 20/28 September 2023
71SSIFF - 22/30 September 2023
Official
Sponsor
Sponsor
Media
Partner
Partner
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).
Calls for entries Log-in to MY FESTIVAL
Complete this form with your details for accessing the contents reserved for registered users.
Enter your email and press send. You will receive a link through which you can reset your password
Complete this form with your details for accessing the contents reserved for registered users.
Agenda
...
Programme and tickets 
Search 
Getting to Know Woody Allen
Films
Films
Getting to Know Woody Allen
Getting to Know Woody Allen
Clive Donner
USA-France
108 min.
Reputed playboy Michael James is incapable of staying faithful to his fiancée, partly because all of the women he knows find him irresistibly attractive. Concerned, he seeks the help of Dr. Fassbender, a mad psychiatrist whose obsession for sex is even more pronounced than his own and who, instead of curing Michael?s problem, contributes to making his life into a mess of ups and down.
Senkichi Taniguchi, Woody Allen (sekuentzia gehigarriak / extra shots / secuencias adicionales)
USA-Japan
79 min.
Woody Allen took a Japanese spy movie entitled Kagi no Kagi, replacing the original voice track with a completely different plot. This new version narrates the adventures of agent Phil Moskowitz and his dangerous mission of obtaining the recipe for the ?best egg salad in the world?. Helped by the lovely Suki Yaki and Teri Yaki, Moskowitz has to prevent the recipe from falling into the hands of the evil Shepherd Wong.
John Huston, Kenneth Hughes, Val Guest, Robert Parrish, Joseph McGrath
USA-UK
131 min.
SMERSH has outlined a plan to destabilize the world. Her Majesty?s Secret Service decides to press an aging James Bond out of retirement and back into action. His objective, to confuse the enemy by unleashing several agents, all named James Bond, and in the casino topple the evil baccarat ace Le Chiffre, whose earnings support the SMERSH.
Woody Allen
USA
85 min.
Based on a series of interviews with those who knew him, the movie takes us through the life of incompetent petty criminal Virgil Starkwell, who was destined to delinquency from very early on. Following a childhood at the mercy of children stronger than him, and having discovered that his musical career was going nowhere, Virgil started stealing. But being a useless thief soon landed him in jail.
Woody Allen
USA
82 min.
Fielding Mellish, an urbanite who works as a tester of the most absurd inventions, starts dating Nancy, an activist who collects signatures against the dictatorship reigning in a country called San Marcos. Being dumped by Nancy on her realising that he isn?t precisely the man of her life, Mellish decides to head for the country in question and join the revolution to impress his loved one and win her back.
Herbert Ross
USA
85 min.
Allan Felix would like to be Bogart, to be able to drink like Bogart and to seduce like Bogart. But he?s nothing but a neurotic film reviewer recently dumped by his bored-to-death wife. With the help of his friends Dick and Linda plus that of Bogart himself, who appears from time to time to give him advice, Allan starts dating women again, though not with much success.
Woody Allen
USA
87 min.
A buffoon tries to win the queen?s favours with an aphrodisiac. A doctor falls hopelessly in love with a sheep. A woman who only gets the hots in public places. A sperm terrified at the thought of its imminent departure to the outside world... Seven episodes in which Woody Allen uses his own style to answer the questions asked in a book about sex on which the film is based.
Woody Allen
USA
88 min.
After 200 years in hybernation, clarinet-playing health food store owner Miles Monroe wakens in 2174 in a police-controlled America that keeps watch on its citizens day and night. Despite his obvious cowardice, Miles joins the underground to frustrate plans to clone the ?big boss? and perpetrate his dictatorship.
Woody Allen
USA
85 min.
Early 19th Century. Boris Grushenko lives in a small Russian village obsessed with death and his cousin Sonia, who is about to marry a herring trader. Obliged by his family, Boris enlists in the army to fight against Napoleon. Time sees him turn into a war hero to the extent, despite his pacifist convictions, of holding Europe?s fate at gun point.
Martin Ritt
USA
94 min.
During the years of the ?witch hunt?, TV scriptwriter Alfred Miller is one of the writers condemned to ostracism for his left-wing ideals. In order to be able to continue working, he offers money to Howard Prince, an ex-fellow student, in exchange for being able to sign his name to his works. But he?s not the only writer in the same situation demanding Howard?s services as a front man.
Woody Allen
USA
93 min.
Alvy Singer is a professional comedian who believes that the world is split into two categories: horrible and miserable. Based on this caustic, ingenious pessimism, Alvy reflects on the reasons for his breakup with Annie Hall, a budding neurotic singer with whom he has had a relationship marked by confusions and incompatibilities.
Woody Allen
USA
93 min.
Eve, whose husband Arthur has walked out on her, joins her three daughters to try and deal with the situation. Although she?s having a hard time, her daughters have their problems too, a number of which arise from Eve?s stilted loving of them over the years. Emotions hit the fan when Arthur shows up at the family house with the woman he intends to marry.
Woody Allen
USA
96 min.
Isaac?s sentimental life isn?t perfect. His ex-wife is writing a book revealing the couple?s intimacies. Although he?s dating Tracy, a student much younger than himself, he has started to really like his best friend?s mistress, Mary. His is yet another of the little tragicomedies occurring in a black and white New York moving to the beat of George Gershwin?s music.
Woody Allen
USA
89 min.
A movie director specializing in comedies, Sandy Bates attends a retrospective on his work in a coastal hotel. While everyone around him wants to meet him and shower praise upon him, Bates withdraws into himself to take a look at the most important moments in his love life and find a meaning for his part in a world he finds increasingly strange and inhospitable.
Woody Allen
USA
88 min.
Early 20th century. Three couples meet for a weekend in the country: an inventor who has created a ?spirit-catching ball? and his wife, who has sex problems; a rationalist and pompous philosophy lecturer and his fiancée, much younger than him; and a doctor, a compulsive womanizer, with his latest conquest. The idyllic setting is the perfect backdrop for mixed feelings between the different members of the group.
Woody Allen
USA
79 min.
Mock documentary on the figure of Leonard Zelig, a chameleon of a man who astounded the American society of the ?jazz era?. His story starts the day he tells a lie on claiming to have read Moby Dick simply not to feel out of things. The need to be accepted kicks in, and he starts physically transforming according to those around him, instantly hitting the front pages.
Woody Allen
USA
85 min.
In a Broadway restaurant a group of comedians exchange old stories about the world of showbiz. As the conversation progresses, they recall Danny Rose, an agent who took on some of the most disastrous artists in the trade and whom on one occasion even risked his life to relaunch the career of an outmoded singer.
Woody Allen
USA
84 min.
It?s the Depression and Cecilia works herself into the ground as a waitress in New Jersey while her husband does nothing. Her only outlet is the cinema, to which she returns time and again to escape from reality and dream of a world of champagne, tuxedoes and elegant parties. One evening, one of the actors in her favourite film, The Purple Rose of Cairo, notices her and comes out of the screen to meet her.
Jean-Luc Godard
France
26 min.
Short film
Meeting WA is a dialogue between two directors who mutually admire one another, Jean-Luc Godard and Woody Allen, filmed making the most of their meeting when Woody Allen participated in the film King Lear. Godard asked Allen various questions already prepared by him, but in a meeting of talents as great as these, the best bit are the asides.
Woody Allen
USA
107 min.
Hannah seems to have a balanced, perfect life. A successful actress, exemplary wife and mother, she has become the centre of gravity and reference for her entire family. Her sisters, a lot less lucky, turn to her when they need advice or have money problems. But the situation starts changing when Elliot, Hannah?s husband, falls for her sister Jill.
Woody Allen
USA
88 min.
These are the 40s, the golden age of radio, when the peculiar members of a working-class New York family live with the set on all day long. The music, tear-jerking dramas, stories about super-heroes, competitions, reports on high society and sports legends make them feel a bit less unhappy while they create a nostalgic collection of anecdotes about an unrepeatable period.
Woody Allen
USA
82 min.
In the last days of August, Diane, a former filmstar full of life, and her companion visit her daughter Lane at her country house. Lane is a depressive woman, marked by the murder, when she was a child, of the lover of the mother she blames for her bad luck in life. She is in love with Peter, a writer in turn in love with Stephanie, one of Lane?s friends who feels similarly smitten despite being married to someone else.
Woody Allen
USA
84 min.
Brilliant philosophy lecturer Marion Post has asked for sabbatical leave to write a book. One day she discovers that while working in her studio she can hear the psychoanalysis sessions taking place in the next door surgery. A patient?s moving confessions lead her to make an in-depth analysis of her own life, finding it to be empty, based on self-deception and the fear of emotion.
Martin Scorsese (Life Lessons) Francis Ford Coppola (Life without Zoe) Woody Allen (Oedipus Wreck)
USA
119 min.
A brilliant, selfish painter has a difficult relationship with an aspiring artist (Martin Scorsese?s Life Lessons). A millionnaire child is determined to bring her always absent parents back together again (Francis Ford Coppola?s Life Without Zoe). A magician makes a lawyer?s dominating mother disappear, only to reappear in the Manhattan sky to continue sticking her nose into everyone?s life (Woody Allen?s Oedipus Wreck). Three stories signed by Scorsese, Coppola and Allen with New York as their leitmotiv.
Woody Allen
USA
104 min.
Judah and Clifford are each faced with their own dilemma and its gravity. Judah, a reputed eye specialist, plans to end his relationship with his mistress Dolores, who threatens to tell all and ruin his life if he leaves her. His brother Jack offers him the chance to murder her. For his part, Clifford is a documentary director obliged to turn a film about the brother-in-law he scorns.
Woody Allen
USA
106 min.
Married to a man who underestimates her, Alice lives an empty, comfortable life between exclusive boutiques, massage parlours and gossip at the hairdresser?s. She?d like to write and get more familiar with a man she met at her kids? kindergarten, but is hindered by her conservative education. A Chinatown sorcerer will show her the way a mixture of magic herbs and their surprising effects.
Paul Mazursky
USA
87 min.
The restaurants, cinemas and shops of a shopping mall serve as the backdrop against which Nick Fifer and his wife, Deborah, are preparing their 16th wedding anniversary. While shopping, Nick confesses his infidelity to Deborah, who immediately demands a divorce. Thus, their wedding anniversary takes the shape of plans for their imminent separation.
Woody Allen
USA
86 min.
A strangler is sowing panic in the city, cloaked in a dense fog. The insignificant Kleinman is wakened in the middle of the night to participate in a plan ending with the criminal?s arrest. But his specific role in this plan is never very clear. His fearful steps in the deserted streets cross paths with those of a circus sword-swallower just left by her boyfriend, one of the clowns.
Woody Allen
USA
107 min.
The announcement that Jack and Sally, two of their best friends, are separating, sparks off a crisis between Gabe and Judy, similarly gradually realising that their marriage isn?t precisely at its best moment. While Jack and Sally try to rebuild their lives with other people, Gabe starts flirting with one of his university students and Judy feels attracted to Sally?s new friend.
Woody Allen
USA
104 min.
Carol suspects that her aged neighbour has murdered his wife, found dead seemingly due to a heart attack. Her husband, Larry, thinks she?s paranoid and tries to get the idea out of her head; but Carol is determined to find out more about her neighbour and decides to follow him with the help of Ted, a friend of the couple who?s always fancied her.
Woody Allen
USA
98 min.
The 20s. David Shayne, a down-and-out playwright, has finally obtained funding for one of his plays. On one condition: one of the parts is to be played by Olive, useless girlfriend of the producer, gangster Nick Valenti. Olive turns up at the rehearsals with her bodyguard, Cheech who, not stopping at simply looking after her, takes the liberty of suggesting changes in the play to improve it.
Woody Allen
USA
100 min.
Mid-Cold War, the members of the Hollander family on holiday in one of the countries beyond the Iron Curtain taken for spies on being caught taking pictures of a forbidden area seek refuge in the US Embassy, temporarily in the incompetent hands of the Embassador?s son. But it?s not long before their typical American tourist demands start creating tension.
John Erman
USA
95 min.
Mature comedian Willy Clark has been retired from the stage for some time. His niece Nancy has landed him a part in a film, but he has to collaborate on it with the former other half of his duo, Al Lewis. The problem is that Al and Willy haven?t spoken to each other for years and their re-encounter will cause more than the occasional headache.
Woody Allen
USA
95 min.
Talking her husband Lenny into adopting a newborn baby, Amanda puts the punch back into their relationship. As the child grows, Lenny realises that his IQ is above-normal. After the break-up of their marriage, Lenny throws himself heart and soul into finding his son?s real mother, imagining her to be brilliant, but finally discovering that she?s a not-too-bright porno star.
Woody Allen
USA
101 min.
Steffi and Bob are married, rich, liberal and socially committed. Steffi was married to Joe, a guy unlucky with women, with whom she had a slightly unstable daughter. Bob has a conservative son, a daughter who has endangered her marriage on falling in love with a delinquent and another two teenage daughters who fight over multi-millionnaire men. They all put their feelings to music in New York, Paris and Venice.
Woody Allen
USA
96 min.
Harry Block is a successful writer who has often set his works around his own sentimental and family experiences. Most of his friends, relatives and ex-wives have seen themselves reflected and deformed in his characters, and they hate him for it. It?s not therefore easy for him to find someone to come with him on the trip to his old university at which they?re going to pay him a tribute.
Barbara Kopple
USA
105 min.
Documentary filmed during the tour taking Woody Allen and his traditional new Orleans jazz band to various European cities in 1997. The camera captured not only the band?s performances and Allen?s relationship with his musicians, but moments of intimacy between the director and those close to him: his sister, Letty Aronson, his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, and his children.
Woody Allen
USA
113 min.
At 40, Lee Simon feels that he?s not made the most of life. He writes travel features and interviews people from the world of showbiz, but dreams of selling a book or a screenplay to boost his social prestige. Since his divorce, he has had relationship upon relationship in an environment as dazzling as it is superficial, where anyone can be famous.
Woody Allen
USA
95 min.
Master guitar-playing jazz genius of the 30s, Emmet Ray is only rivalled by the man with whom he is obsessed: the legendary Django Reinhardt. The off-stage Emmet is an arrogant, uncouth womanizer who drinks too much and gets off shooting at rats. One day he meets Hattie, a mute girl with whom he enters a relationship much too serious for his liking.
Alfonso Arau
USA
95 min.
Finding out that his wife has been cheating on him, a butcher named Tex murders his wife in a fit of fury. To get rid of the body, he decides to cut it into pieces and bury it in the desert, but loses one of her hands on the way. Some time later, a woman trips over the hand and recovers her sight. The occurrence is considered to be a miracle and hundreds of people start flocking to the spot in search of the ?relic?.
Woody Allen
USA
94 min.
Sick of washing dishes, Ray Winkler unites a gang of robbers for the job of their lives. The front: a cookie store next to the bank in which his wife will be working while they dig an underground tunnel into the strongroom. The heist is a disaster, but the cookie shop is such as success that they all become millionnaires, a status for which none of them are prepared.
Woody Allen
USA-Germany
103 min.
C.W. Briggs is a veteran insurance company detective famous for his case-solving abilities. Betty Ann is a new employee who intimidates him intellectually and seems to hate him. At a company meal they both participate in a show at which a hypnotist programmes their minds to react to his instructions and perform robberies they won?t remember having committed.
Woody Allen
USA
3 min.
Short film
Six weeks after the 9/11 attack in New York, an enormous concert took place in Madison Square Garden featuring musicians like David Bowie or Paul McCartney and short films made for the occasion by directors like Martin Scorsese, Kevin Smith or Woody Allen, who paid his own little tribute to the city with this funny story about mobile phones.
Woody Allen
USA
112 min.
Val Waxman is a movie director whose moon has long-waned and now works in advertising. Finally receiving an offer to direct a film, he suffers from sudden blindness just before shooting starts. Determined to make the most of the opportunity at any price, Waxman decides to conceal his blindness and go ahead with the film.
Woody Allen
USA-France-The Nederlands
108 min.
Young, aspiring writer Jerry Falk theoretically has his whole life before him. But he?s been attending psychoanalysis for some time, his career is going nowhere and his girlfriend no longer feels sexually attracted to him. David Dobel, an older professional colleague, becomes his mentor, trying to help him with his problems, but his advice is a touch on the radical side.
Official Sponsor 
Media Partner 
Official Collaborators: 
Associated Institutions:
Opening hours
Monday to Thursday: 09:00h - 15:00h
Friday: 10:00h - 14:00h
Monday to Thursday: 09:00h - 15:00h
Friday: 10:00h - 14:00h
Suscribe to our newsletter
We inform you that the personal data you provide to us on completing this form will be processed by the San Sebastian Festival as the body responsible for this website. The personal data we request will be processed for the purpose of sending you our newsletter. Authorisation to do so is given through the consent of the interested party. Only the San Sebastian Festival will send you messages and we will not disclose your data to third parties. We inform you that the data you provide to us will be stored in the Mailrelay (email marketing providers) servers, located within the EU. See the Mailrelay privacy policy. If you do not enter the data appearing as mandatory on the form, we may be unable to fulfil your request. You can exercise your rights of access, rectification, limitation and deletion of data at privacidad@sansebastianfestival.com. You can consult additional and detailed information on Data Production in our privacy policy.