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).
Director and screenwriter Borja Cobeaga is back in his home town to present his latest film Pagafantas and to form part of the Kutxa-New Directors Jury. He confesses that years ago he was a member of the Youth Jury who always gave awards to horrendous films while the one he liked won the New Directors Award, and now years later here he is working on the same jury.
He says that he is getting on fine with his fellow jurors and that it is much easier to judge a film than to make one and if he had to judge his own film that is being shown in the Made in Spain section, he’d probably find lots of flaws in it. His short film Éramos Pocos was nominated for an Oscar a few years ago and he recalls how this enabled him to fulfil a childhood dream of going to the Oscar Ceremony in Hollywood where he was able to hobnob with the likes of Steven Spielberg.