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 Selection
Films
Films
Official Selection
Official Selection
François Ozon
FRANCE
105 min.
The French filmmaker François Ozon, who already competed in the Official Section of the Festival in 2000 with Sous le sable (Under the Sand) and in 2009 with Le refuge, is back with a film about the relationship between a teacher and one of his students, in a clever game in which the lines between reality and fiction become blurred and you cannot tell what dark purposes the youngster is concealing or how far his scheming will go.
Laurent Cantet
FRANCE-CANADA
143 min.
Laurent Cantet, who in 1999 won the New Directors Award at San Sebastian with Ressources humaines (Human Resources) and winner of the Golden Palm at Cannes in 2008 with his previous film, Entre les murs / The Class, portrays in his new film set in 1953 a group of girls living in a small New York State city who form the secret girls’ society, “Foxfire”. The gang sets out on a trip of vengeance to fulfil the impossible dream of living by their own rules and laws, no matter what happens. Raven Adamson, Katie Coseni, Claire Mazarolle, Madeleine Bisson and Rachel Nyhuus head the cast.
Opening Film (In competition)
Nicholas Jarecki
USA
106 min.
A taut and alluring thriller about love and loyalty in the world of high finance. Gere and Sarandon are accompanied by a cast that also includes Tim Roth, Brit Marling, Laetitia Casta, and Nate Parker. The main character in the film is Robert Miller (Richard Gere), a magnate who on the eve of his 60th birthday seems to be the very portrait of success in American business and family life, always accompanied by his loyal wife Ellen (Susan Sarandon) and Brooke (Brit Marling), his daughter and heir-apparent. However, behind the gilded walls of his mansion, Miller is in over his head, desperately trying to complete the sale of his empire to a major bank before the depths of his fraud are revealed. He is also having an affair with a French art-dealer (Laetitia Casta) behind his wife’s and daughter’s backs. Just as he’s about to unload his troubled empire, an unexpected bloody error forces him to confront the limits of his moral duplicity.
Closing Film
Dustin Hoffman
UK
95 min.
Closing gala (Out of competition)
The directorial debut from Dustin Hoffman, one of the great Hollywood actors, focuses on Reggie, Wilf and Cissie, who reside in a home for retired opera singers. Each year they stage a concert to celebrate Verdi's birthday, but the arrival of Reggie's ex-wife creates tension when she plays the diva part but refuses to sing in the concert.
Not in competition
Emily Tang
CHINA
88 min.
The third film by Chinese director Emily Tang. After his son died in an accident, Cheng approached the wife of the driver responsible and asked to be given another child. Amongst court's order, medical bill and Cheng's wife terrorising behaviour, Yu faces the paradoxes of an immoral decision.
Fernando Trueba
SPAIN
104 min.
Fernando Trueba, one of the most prestigious filmmakers in Spain, has set his latest film somewhere in occupied France, not far from the Spanish border. An old renowned sculptor, tired of life and mankind’s folly, rediscovers the desire to work again and sculpt his last piece thanks to the arrival of a young Spanish woman who has escaped from a refugee camp. The film has an international cast headed by the veteran French actor Jean Rochefort, the Spanish actress Aida Folch and the Italian film star, Claudia Cardinale.
Ziad Doueiri
LEBANON-FRANCE-QATAR-BELGIUM
95 min.
The third film by the Lebanese director Zaid Doueiri (Lila says) is an adaptation of the international best seller by Yasmina Khadra, published in France in 2006 and translated into more than forty languages. The film focuses on the moral dilemma faced by an Arab-Israeli surgeon when the police inform him that his wife has carried out a suicide bombing that has killed nineteen people.
Pablo Berger
SPAIN-FRANCE
98 min.
The new film by Pablo Berger (Torremolinos 73) is an original vision of the popular fairy tale by the brothers Grimm, set in the 1920s in the south of Spain. A Snow White full of fantasy, adventures, emotion and humour. Maribel Verdú, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Inma Cuesta, Ángela Molina, Macarena García and Ramón Barea head the cast.
Costa-Gavras
FRANCE
114 min.
The latest work by Costa-Gavras, winner of an Academy Award, prizes at Cannes and Berlin and director of classics like Z (1969), État de siège (1972), Missing (1982) and Music Box (1989). This is the story of the unstoppable ascent of Marc Tourneuil, an expendable servant of the Capital who became its undisputed master. In the director’s words: “We are slaves to the Capital. We tremble when it trembles. We celebrate when it grows and triumphs. Who will set us free? Should we liberate ourselves? We should at the very least know those who serve it and how”. The film stars Gad Elmaleh and Gabriel Byrne.
Carlos Sorin
ARGENTINA
80 min.
For the fith time, the Argentine Carlos Sorin is taking part in the Official Section of the Festival, after having competed with Eversmile New Jersey in 1989, Historias mínimas (Special Jury Award at the 50th Film Festival in 2002), Bombón, el perro (FIPRESCI Award 2004) and El camino de San Diego (Special Jury Award at the 54th Festival in 2006). His latest film features Marco, a fifty-year-old ex- alcoholic who is advised to find a hobby to dry out: he chooses fishing in a small village in Patagonia, which just happens to be where his daughter lives, who he hasn’t seen in years.
Bahman Ghobadi
TURKEY
103 min.
The Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi has already bagged two Golden Shells at San Sebastian: in 2004 with Turtles Can Fly and in 2006 with Niwemang/Half Moon. His latest film tells the tale of Sahel, an Iranian-Kurdish poet newly released from a thirty-year prison sentence who thinks of nothing but finding his wife. But she thinks he is dead. Monica Bellucci and Behrouz Vossoughi headline the film.
Lasse Hallström
SWEDEN
120 min.
Swedish director Lasse Hallström –remembered for films like Mitt liv son hund (My Life as a Dog, 1985), The Cider House Rules, (1999), Chocolat (2000) and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011)– adapts in his new film the best seller by Lars Kepler. The film narrates the investigations of a detective who pairs with a hypnotist to uncover the author of a savage killing. Stars Lena Olin, Mikael Persbrandt and Tobias Ziliacus.
Barbara Albert
AUSTRIA
110 min.
One of the most prestigious Austrian filmmakers, Barbara Albert (Nordrand, Fallen), tells the story of a journey into the past of the II World War and into the abyss of contemporary European society through the life of young 25-year-old Sita, a journey that leads her from Berlin to Vienna, and from Warsaw to Rumania in a film about loss, self-discovery and identity.
Javier Rebollo
SPAIN-ARGENTINA-FRANCE
94 min.
Alter competing at the Festival in 2006 with his debut film, Lo que sé de Lola, and winning the Silver Shell for Best Director three years later with his second film, La mujer sin piano, Javier Rebollo is back in San Sebastián with his latest film. José Sacristán plays an aging, dry, affectionate and entertaining hit man, who goes on a 2000-kilometre-long darkly comic journey to nowhere.
Sergio Castellitto
ITALY-SPAIN
125 min.
Penélope Cruz stars in the latest film by the Italian actor and director Sergio Castellitto. The actress plays Gemma, a woman who managed to escape from the awful siege of Sarajevo with her new-born son, but who lost her husband there, with whom she lived a great love story. Sixteen years later, she goes back to Sarajevo with her son so that he can visit the city where he was born and discover the father that he never knew.
Ben Affleck
USA
120 min.
Argo is based on real events that took place during the Iranian revolution in 1979, when the US embassy in Teheran was stormed by revolutionaries and 52 American citizens were taken hostage. However, six of them managed to escape and take refuge at the Canadian ambassador’s home. The CIA has to get them home without the Iranian authorities knowing what’s going on, so they need to organise a secret high-risk operation. Agent Toni Mendez devises a plan fraught with danger to get them out safely, an incredible idea that could only work out in a film. The events described in the film were concealed from public opinion for decades.
Argo is Affleck’s third film as a director, after Gone Baby, Gone and The Town, and is produced by Affleck himself, the actor and director George Clooney and Grant Heslov. Apart from Affleck, the cast also includes John Goodman and Alan Arkin, who won an Oscar for best supporting actor for Little Miss Sunshine.
Not in competition
Eduard Cortés
SPAIN-ARGENTINA
116 min.
In his latest film, Eduard Cortés (La vida de nadie, The Pelayos) describes one of the craziest robberies in the history of crime. In 1955 Evita’s jewellery is pawned at a Spanish jeweller’s by General Perón’s assistants to pay his expenses in exile. However things don’t go as planned and some loyal Peronist agents will have to turn into impromptu thieves to recover them. Guillermo Francella, Nicolás Cabré, Amaia Salamanca, Oscar Jaenada, Daniel Fanego and Jordi Martínez head the cast.
Not in competition
Juan Antonio Bayona
SPAIN
113 min.
The second film by JuanAntonio Bayona (El orfanato / The Orphanage) is a drama starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. It tells the story of a couple and their three children whose quiet holidays in Thailand turn into a nightmare when a huge tsunami engulfs the grounds of their hotel. They will now all have to fight for their very lives.
Not in competition
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