The 63rd San Sebastian Film Festival will present eight feature films in the Zinemira section, dedicated to films produced in the Basque Country. Four world premieres and another four titles from this year’s production make up the selection.
All of the premieres compete for the Irizar Basque Film Award, alongside the remaining productions with a minimum of 20% Basque production presented as a world premiere in any of the Festival sections. The Irizar Award is decided by a specific jury and comes with €20,000 gross for the producer or producers of the winning film.
ZINEMIRA
Section dedicated to Basque film organised by the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the Basque Government Department of Culture and the Filmoteca Vasca; with the sponsorship of Irizar and EITB; and the collaboration of EPE/AVE and IBAIA.
World premiere – Basque Film Gala
June returns to the town of her birth by surprise after spending time abroad. The return home will be painful: her family and her first love, Diego, have changed. She too has changed, and repairing the broken ties won’t be easy. But just like the autumn wind, June will take the place by storm.
What’s in a refugee’s mobile phone? Their recollections, their memory, their identity, contact with the world they’ve left behind. This film narrates everyday life in a mobile phone repair shop in the Zataari refugee camp.
World premiere
Hasparren, 1956. Amid great expectation, a documentary in the Basque language about the Basque Country was released in the local cinema. In the following months it was screened in other Basque and French towns on both sides of the border, and even in Paris, San Francisco and Dakar. But suddenly it disappeared from sight and everyone forgot about it. Sixty years later, filmmaker Josu Martinez sets out to find it.
World premiere
A documentary narrating the incredible story of the Jai Alai through its most iconic characters. A great many similarities can be drawn between the biography of our characters and the actual history of the Jai Alai. Beginnings in humble surroundings, huge successes all over the world in pelota courts packed to the hilt with distinguish publics, losses of identity due to adapting a traditional game to societies with completely different values...
The San Sebastian Jazz Festival looks back over its 50 years of history in this documentary with comments from some of its leading figures and images of extraordinary concerts forever engraved on the memory.
Feature film directorial debut from the animation movie director, Sam. La Trini, a world-famous Flamenco dancer, leaves the tablaos in deep depression after her husband’s death. Damian, her 8 year-old son, is possessed by an evil demon who prompts him to commit horrendously cruel and bloody acts.
A film about two adversaries who will learn to know and respect one another, despite their differences: Domingo Iturbe, "Txomin", head of the ETA military apparatus, and Grégoire Fortin, adviser to Mitterrand’s Minister of Justice.
World premiere
The world is increasingly more divided by walls. There are human beings on either side of them. The question is not whether their existence is absurd or logical, whether they can be avoided or not, but to demonstrate that the people on both sides are basically exactly the same.
Short films from the Kimuak catalogue
The section will also include the selection of shorts in the Kimuak 2015 programme, an initiative of the Basque Government Department of Culture and Euskadiko Filmategia-Filmoteca Vasca with the objective of lending visibility to the best Basque shorts of the year. This year’s Kimuak selection includes seven short films.
Carlos has prepared a surprise for his wife. They argued a few days ago and he wants to apologise.
In London, a young estate agent must combine landing a crucial sale with caring for his 10 year-old son. Malcolm and Aron struggle to understand one another, while an urban fox follows them over a rainy night.
Don Mariano travels by plane and makes his way to a prestigious restaurant specialising in natural, quality red meats, low in fat and cholesterol.
In an abandoned village, only inhabited by a middle-aged man and woman, lights start to come on in some of the empty houses. Each reacts differently to the phenomenon. Their lives will never be the same again.
In Iceland people live in the dark for a large part of the year. The good thing about the night is that it’s like a backdrop which erases the details and leaves you faced with only the essential, as if you were before a sheet of paper you are about to draw on.
The well-known activist and blogger Mark Figueroa, upset when a woman two-times him, decides to wreak revenge by inviting all women cheated on by their partners to have relations with him.
Tucker Dávila Wood’s short film Duellum, will also be screened in the Zabaltegi section.
ZINEMIRA AWARD
Makeup artist Karmele Soler will receive this year’s Zinemira Award, given by the San Sebastian International Film Festival and the EPE/APV and IBAIA producers’ associations to the career of an outstanding personality in the world of Basque film. The Zinemira Award will be presented at the Basque Film Gala on September 22 at the Victoria Eugenia Theatre, with premiere of Lara Izagirre’s film, Un otoño sin Berlín. The Basque Film Party, sponsored by Eroki, will take part after the Gala.
Karmele Soler was born in San Sebastian, daughter of a professional footballer and an aesthetician who passed on her love of makeup. She began at a very young age and had two excellent teachers. In the city of her birth she studied Aesthetics and two years later professional makeup at Estudio 24 in Madrid with makeup artist Juan Pedro Hernández. Thanks to Alfredo Landa, she landed the position of apprentice with the makeup artist Romana González on José Luis Garci’s film, Sesión continua (1984). She later specialised in Film Makeup at the Société Française de Maquillage in Paris. She took her first professional steps at what were at that time the recently opened ETB Miramón studios, where she continues to work today.
Her first movie experience as a makeup artist was on the first films in the Basque language produced by ETB in 1986: Andu Lertxundi’s Hamaseigarrenean aidanez; Alfonso Ungría’s Ehun metro; and Xabier Elorriaga’s Zergatik Panpox. In 1988 came Ander eta Yul, by Ana Díez. And in 1989, Felipe Vega’s El mejor de los tiempos was her first film away from home. She continued to combine Basque cinema with national and international films, providing makeup in co-productions with numerous countries all over the world: Cape Verde, Morocco, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Italy, Norway, Nepal, Portugal and France.
She has worked with directors including: Iciar Bollaín on Hola, ¿estás sola? (Hi, Are You Alone?, 1995), También la lluvia (Even the Rain, 2010), Katmandú, un espejo en el cielo (Kathmandu, 2011) and El olivo (2015); Pedro Almodóvar on Hable con ella (Talk to Her, 2002) and La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In, 2011); Julio Medem on Tierra (Earth, 1996) and Los amantes del Círculo Polar (The Lovers of the Arctic Circle, 1998); Juanma Bajo Ulloa on Alas de mariposa (1991), La madre muerta (The Dead Mother, 1993), Airbag (1997) and Frágil (2004); Joaquín Oristrell on Novios (1999), Sin vergüenza (No Shame, 2001) and Inconscientes (Unconscious, 2004); Achero Mañas on Noviembre (November, 2003) and Todo lo que tú quieras (Everything You Want, 2010); Daniel Calparsoro on Salto al vacío (Leap into the Void, 1995) and Combustión (Combustion, 2013); Daniel Sánchez Arévalo on Azuloscurocasinegro (Dark Blue Almost Black, 2006) and Primos (2011); Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón on Cosas que dejé en La Habana (Things I Left in Havana, 1997); Imanol Uribe on La carta esférica (The Nautical Chart, 2007); Pablo Malo on Lasa eta Zabala (Lasa and Zabala, 2014) and Fernando González Molina on Palmeras en la nieve (Palm Trees in the Snow, 2015). Karmele was also head of the makeup and hair department on another 54 films.
She has received several Goya award nominations, for Noviembre in 2002, Inconscientes in 2003, También la lluvia in 2009 and Andrucha Waddington’s Lope in 2009. In 2012 she finally landed the Goya for La piel que habito. She has also been nominated twice for the Gaudí awards, for Lope and The Frost (2009), by Ferran Audí.
ETB GALA
Screening of the first episode in this series set in a Basque coastal town in the 50s about the attempts of a group of people to survive and remain united in years that were particularly harsh for the majority.
Competing titles for the Irizar Basque Film Award
Basque productions in other sections
Films spoken partially or totally in Basque
Children’s films dubbed into Basque
A selection of films made for children will be screened dubbed into Basque, with the collaboration of Zineuskadi as part of the Zinema Euskaraz programme.
In addition, the Velodrome will host the screening every morning of the film Astérix: Le domaine des dieux /Asterix and Obelix: Mansion of the Gods dubbed into Basque and Spanish.
Films in other sections with Basque subtitles
IV EUROPE-LATIN AMERICA CO-PRODUCTION FORUM
The Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum is an initiative of the San Sebastian Festival conceived for industry professionals with the aim of promoting the development of film projects between Europe and Latin America, thereby strengthening co-production and international promotion networks.
It is also a gathering place for all industry professionals present at San Sebastian and has its own team of matchmakers to facilitate contacts.
The Basque Government Department of Economic Development and Competitiveness promotes this activity, which has the support of Creative Europe-MEDIA and the collaboration of the Producers Network, Ventana Sur, EGEDA (Audiovisual Producers’ Rights Management Association), Eiken (Basque Audiovisual Cluster), EPE-APV (Basque Producers Association), Creative Europe Media Desk Euskadi – Zineuskadi, Europa Distribucion, FAPAE (Federation of Spanish Audiovisual Producer Associations), IBAIA (Association of Independent Audiovisual Production Companies of the Basque Country), Etxepare Institute, LatAm Cinema and the Ibermedia Programme.
XI LAU HAIZETARA DOCUMENTARY FILM CO-PRODUCTION FORUM
The main aim of this Forum is to offer audiovisual sector professionals a meeting point to promote coproduction relationships between production companies in European regions. Consequently, the Coproduction Forum will bring together professionals from the audiovisual and cinematographic sector. The session will run morning and afternoon and will include pitching sessions, a schedule of individual meetings, which will allow to the producers presenting their projects to European Commissioning Editors and different film industry professionals. Those who wish to attend as public to the pitching, as well as to know different European professionals of the audiovisual and cinematographic industry, have still time to participate in.
For further information: www.lauhaizetara.eu