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).
Oskar Alegria came to the Festival last year with Emak bakia baita, but this year he’s here as a jury member who will have the responsibility of judging the films in the New Directors section. He says that, “I think it’s really nice to be able to judge someone’s first faltering steps rather than a long-running career because I don’t like to know a lot about the films; I prefer to come in fresh and armed with just three lines from the catalogue to get a first taste, and with new directors it’s still easy because you don’t know anything about the director’s career and you’re not influenced by their previous work. It’s a fresher way to start to assess something”His first feature Emak Bakia baita, which was at the Festival in 2012 has been screened at 40 festivals and has won a lot of awards. It has been in Shanghai where it became the first film in Basque to be shown in China. It has also been at the Festival of the Rockies where only 30 films are screened each year and only Trueba and Erice have had Spanish films shown there
before.