San Sebastian Film Festival ::

Woody Allen

USA

100 min.

Melinda and Melinda combines romantic comedy and drama in a way that Woody Allen, unique among filmmakers, likes to contrast. It takes place in Manhattan and chronicles a pair of crises that give great reign to the funny and serious talents of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Ferrell, Jonny Lee Miller, Radha Mitchell, Amanda Peet, Chloë Sevigny and Wallace Shawn. All the usual Allen areas are explained - the fragility of love, marital infidelity, sophisticated romance, the inability to communicate. As a character in the movie puts it, "He's despondent, he's desperate, he's suicidal. All the comic elements are in place."

Not in competition

Closing Film

The Door in the Floor

Tod Williams

USA

111 min.

Once-happy couple formed by Ted and Marion flounders under the weight of tragedy. Although the Coles pour love onto their remaining daughter, the smart 4-year-old Ruth, Marion?s confusion between love and loss, together with Ted?s infidelities, force them to consider a change. Perhaps the change in question will come in the shape of Eddie, the young boy that Ted, a writer of children?s books, hires as a summer assistant. Although Eddie adores Ted, the latter?s disorganized way of working soon leaves the boy out on a leg. The youngster turns his desires to Marion, who finds herself experiencing unexpected emotions as a woman and a mother. To his surprise and delight, Marion fervently accepts his advances. As the summer draws to an end, Marion and Ted have to take difficult decisions regarding the family future.

Not in competition

Being Julia

István Szabó

Canada

105 min.

In London in 1938, beautiful and beguiling Julia Lambert is at her peak, physically and professionally. But her successful theatrical career and her marriage to handsome impresario Michael Gosselyn have become stale and unfulfilling. She longs for novelty, excitement, sparks. Enter Tom Fennell, a younger man who claims to be Julia?s greatest fan. Finding his ardor irresistible, she decides that romance is the best antidote to a mid-life crisis and embarks on a passionate affair. Life becomes more daring and exciting, until Julia?s young lover callously tries to relegate her to a supporting role. Summoning all of her considerable powers, Julia masterminds a brilliant revenge that places her exactly where she belongs, center stage and in the spotlight.

Not in competition

Bombón, el perro / Bombón, the dog

Carlos Sorín

Argentina-Spain

95 min.

Coco has spent his entire life working at a service station on the point of closing, leaving himself and the rest of the staff out of work. Unemployed and with very few prospects, he ends up keeping a fabulous mastiff which will become not only his friend but his hope for a better life.

Brødre / Brothers

Susanne Bier

Denmark

110 min.

Michael has everything under control: a successful military career, a beautiful wife and two daughters. His younger brother Jannik is a drifter, living on the edge of the law. When Michael is sent to Afghanistan on a UN mission, the balance between the two brothers changes forever. Michael is missing in action - presumed dead - and Sarah is comforted by Jannik, who against all odds takes responsibility for himself and the family. It soon becomes clear that their feelings have developed beyond mutual sympathy. When Michael comes home, traumatized by being held prisoner in the mountains of Afghanistan, nothing is the same...

El cielito / Little Sky

María Victoria Menis

Argentina-France

93 min.

Lonely and rootless, 20-year-old Felix arrives at a humble Argentine village where he starts working on a small farm owned by a couple with a year-old boy called Chango. With the hot plains as its background and almost in silence, a stressing and unspoken situation of family violence slowly takes over, growing and reaching momentum, drying everything out. But passion is born with the same strength. The helplessness of a marginal character like Felix finds in Chango an outlet, an obsession, a main goal for his life. In present-day Argentina, which has ?orphaned? its humblest inhabitants, leaving them in a situation of extreme destitution, this film, based on a real life story, makes us reflect on maternal and paternal roles and family love, highlighting the links of solidarity which remain unbroken.

Geo-mi-soop / Spider Forest / Spider Forest

Song Il-gon

South Korea

118 min.

Kang Min regains consciousness 14 days after brain surgery following a mysterious accident in the forest. Shockingly enough, the first thing he says is that two people have died in Spider Forest. Detective Choi, Kang Min?s friend, finds a couple brutally murdered at a cottage in the forest, exactly as the boy had described. The dead couple is identified as Choi Jong-phil, Kang Min?s senior and Hwang Soo-young, Kang Min?s girlfriend, therefore turning him into both witness and key suspect in the investigation.

Horas de luz / Hours of Light

Manolo Matjí

Spain

98 min.

September 1987. During a confrontation with the police, Juan José Garfia kills three people in an action forever etched on his mind. Condemned to over a hundred years, Juanjo is a rebel prisoner. In 1991, he punches a hole in the floor of a Black Maria and jumps out while it?s moving. Back in jail, he leads several riots, to which the authorities respond with an experiment: they gather troublesome prisoners together and put them in special confinement. Amid this Hell he meets Marimar, a nurse with whom, despite barely being able to exchange a few words, he shares the feeling of something special. They can only see each other once a month, in the vis-à-vis room. He starts painting and writing. She continues from prison to prison. He becomes her children?s father. And she shows him how to ask for forgiveness. Together they dare to dream of the future. But the future is always a long way off: today they?re still together as the years of sentence continue to stretch ahead of them.

Inguélézi / Clandestine

François Dupeyron

France

97 min.

Having buried her husband, Geneviève leaves the cemetery with her friend Angela. They witness an accident on the way. A truck has left the road. When the police arrive, Geneviève walks back over to the car, slamming the boot shut: she hadn?t noticed that it wasn?t closed properly. The next day, she goes to see Angela and, on talking about the accident, learns that it was carrying illegal immigrants. A lot of them are dead and the others are hiding in the woods. In a flash she understands: she realizes that a man is hiding in the boot of her car. Opening it on the way home, there is indeed a hiding man. After all kinds of contradictory feelings, Geneviève ends up taking the man to England, helping him to get past the police and customs.

Nine Songs

Michael Winterbottom

69 min.

London, autumn 2003. Lisa is an American student in London. Matt meets her at a Black Rebel Motorcycle Concert at the Brixton Academy and falls in love with her. The film follows their relationship and the concerts they attend together (The Von Bondies, Elbow, Primal Scream, The Dandy Warhols, Super Furry Animals, Franz Ferdinand, Michael Nyman). Somewhere between the music and the bands we see Matt and Lisa making love, following their affair until Christmas, when Lisa returns to America.

Yi feng mo sheng nu ren de lai xin / Letter from An Unknown Woman / Letter from An Unknown Woman

Xu Jinglei

China

90 min.

Peking, 1948. A bleak winter night. A man rides home through a war-ridden city. A letter waits for him at home. It?s a letter written by a woman before her death. In it, she tells him that she loves him, a lifelong passion that hasn?t lessened with time, but of which he knew nothing. He recalls their short but passionate young love, the difficulties she had in raising their child, and their last meeting at which he didn?t recognize her. Now that she has lost her son (the only thread linking her to the man she loved), she no longer has the strength to live... Shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman.

Mon père est ingénieur / My Father Is an Engineer

Robert Guédiguian

France

108 min.

Natacha and Jérémie grew up together. They were inseparable. They were lovers. Both studied Medicine, but one day their lives went their separate ways. Jérémie became an important figure, travelling widely and rubbing shoulders with ministers; Natacha continued to work locally and live in her parents? house. Now Jérémie?s back and remembers when they were 14, studied Russian and he was unable to correctly pronounce the sentence: ?My father is an engineer?. He?s back to find out what?s wrong with Natacha, why she?s ill. His investigations lead him to discover the people who knew her, to love the people she loved and to cure the patients she cured. Despite the obstacles, Natacha and Jérémie decide to defy reality and fate and stay together forever.

Omagh

Pete Travis

Ireland - UK

106 min.

As all of Ireland prepared in June 1998 to vote for peace in the Good Friday Agreement referendum, a small group of dissident Provisional IRA members opposed to the peace agreement set out to create a bomb outrage so bloody and calamitous that London and Dublin would be driven apart, the unionists would withdraw from the peace process and Northern Ireland would be driven back into violent conflict. They called themselves the Real IRA and selected their target carefully, choosing Omagh, a small market town where Catholics and Protestants had co-existed remarkably peacefully throughout the 30 years of the Troubles.

Roma

Adolfo Aristarain

Spain-Argentina

155 min.

When journalist Manuel Cueto is hired to type novelist Joaquín Góñez?s last book at his request of the publishing company, his presence provokes an avalanche of feelings in the solitude of the writer, who has shut himself away from the world and from his own memories. The meeting with the young journalist builds a bridge to the forgotten years of his youth in the Buenos Aires of the 50s and 60s. The intimacy of relations with his parents and, particularly, with his mother Roma, an intelligent, strong and understanding woman who supported his youthful ideals, leads him to question the confidence she placed in him. Joaquín very definitely owes to her his free, Bohemian spirit, true to himself and to the ideals of which they dreamt together. It?s the unforgettable memory of Roma that will awaken in Joaquín the desire and impatience to recover everything he thought he had lost.

San zimske noci / Midwinter Night’s Dream

Goran Paskaljevic

Serbia & Montenegro - Spain

95 min.

Serbia. Winter 2004. Lazar returns home after ten long years of absence. He?s a different man today: having regained his liberty, he has decided to free himself from the heavy burden of his past and start a new life in a country also seeming to want a better future. The apartment where he formerly lived is now occupied by Jasna, a single mother who is raising her autistic 12-year-old daughter Jovana. Refugees from Bosnia, they have been squatting in Lazar?s apartment for some time now. Jasna, whose husband has never accepted their daughter?s autism and abandoned them, also wishes to turn the page on a difficult past. Since mother and daughter have nowhere else to go, Lazar doesn?t have the heart to make them leave. Gradually, a special kinship will develop between these three beings marginalized by society...

Silver City

John Sayles

USA

130 min.

Set in Colorado, the heart of the ?New West?, during the election campaigns for state governor, Silver City is a political satire with noir overtones. The new candidate with his grammatical failings is heir to a formidable dynasty of right-wing politicians. While trying to forge a path to the governor?s office, the appearance of a mysterious corpse threatens his campaign, his family empire and the backing of the pressure groups who move the strings. His sharp campaign ace hires the services of a journalist who specializes in blowing the lid off corruption now turned private eye to investigate the potential connection between the anonymous body and the worst enemies of the aspirer?s family.

Sumas y restas / Additions and Subtractions

Víctor Gaviria

Colombia-Spain

108 min.

Medellín, Colombia, when the drug cartels were at their peak. A middle-class engineer, married and from a good family, Santiago has serious money problems. A childhood friend introduces him to the garage-owning, cocaine smuggling Gerardo. Fascinated by the atmosphere of decadent parties, drugs and easy women, Santiago is caught up in whirlpool of easy money, drug traffickers and hired hitmen. But his family and professional situation deteriorate as he becomes the slave of a violent spiral with no way out.

Tarfaya

Daoud Aoulad-Syad

Morocco-France

97 min.

Myriam, 28, arrives to a little village in northern Morocco with nothing but a suitcase and an address in her pocket, determined to reach the Spanish coast. While waiting her turn to make the clandestine crossing, she meets other women in her situation and Hassan, a young down-and-out who falls in love with her. Trying to win her love, he even steals from Did, the leader of the group, so that Myriam, who has lost everything she had on a failed attempt to leave the country, can try again. Enter Lalla Fatima, Myriam?s former boss, who has been looking for her since she discovered that the girl had stolen a considerable amount of money from her. Finally, Myriam succeeds in escaping, but not without having paid an extremely high price for her freedom.

Turtles Can Fly

Bahman Ghobadi

Iran-Iraq

95 min.

In a village in Iraqi Kurdistan, on the border between Iran and Turkey, the villagers desperately seek for a satellite dish antenna in order to keep updated on the impending attack of the Americans in Iraq? Coming from another village with his younger sister and her child, a mutilated boy has a foreboding: the war is getting closer and closer?

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