73rd San Sebastian Festival - 19/27 September 2025
73SSIFF - 19/27 September 2025
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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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Festival Diary
10 THINGS CO-PROD FORUM SAYS
ABOUT LATAM FILM TODAY
Tuesday, September 20th, 2016
Efad and Caci, the associations of European and Latin American public film agencies respectively, offer a new €20,000 ($22,000) cash prize to the lead producer of the Europe Latin America Co-Production Forum’s winning project. Also new, Arte France Cinema will give €5,000 ($5,500) to one project’s lead producer.
Unspooling Sept. 19-21, the Forum also off ers more - an overview of the disparate, sometimes slow-boil trends, energies and concerns, industrial and artistic, driving today’s Latin American filmmaking today. Here are 10:
1. Argentina rules the roost, at least in SanSebastian. Seven of the 17 Forum projects are Argentine productions. Argentina produced way more films than any other Latin American country: 182 features play Mexico’s 140 (an all-time record) and Brazil’s 128 in 2015. The
Forum’s Argentine projects also benefit from a double diaspora. Five of the seven Argentine Forum projects are made either by Argentines who left to live or study abroad but retain links with the country - Azor, lead-produced by Argentine-born Eugenia Mumenthaler’s Geneva-based Alina Film; Argentine Patricio Suarez, an alum of Barcelona’s Cecc film school. Three are made by foreigners who have settled or part-live in Argentina: Italy’s Maura Delpero, director of Hogar; France’s Edson Sidonie, producer of Los dias segun ellos, who works between France and Argentina; Spain’s Andres Longares, long-settled in Buenos Aires. Co-production, in such circumstances, is a natural ambition.
2. Latin America movies haven’t abandoned a political conscience. Almendras’ Una periodista follows a journalist trying to justice the on-the-run Paul Schafer, a pederast head of Colonia Dignidad, a Chilean torture centre. Azor, a fiction feature from Switzerland’s Andreas Fontana, captures 1981 Argentine, “a laboratory for experiments in Neo-Liberal theories, even before
Regan and atcher,” said director Fontana.
3. Yet, as national industries mature, they diversify. Una periodista is inspired by true facts. Blood-Drenched Beard is inspired by Daniel Galera’s post-modern identity drama/mystery
thriller. In contrast, Murga’s Irene is inspired by Roberto Rossellini and Martin Scorsese, more particularly Scorsese’s reflections in My Voyage to Italy on Rossellini’s Europe ’51. Irene is a ‘re-reading or visit to ‘ Europa ’51, seen from the present and set, in this case, in contemporary
Argentina,’ Murga said.
4. Smaller-country industries continue to emerge in Latin America Exhibit A: Peru. A (far from complacent) omnibus homage to the directors’ home-town Lima, Forum entry La panza del burro is a standard- bearer for the figures, issues and international reach of a new generation of Peruvian filmmakers.
5. A second axis of Latin America growth: Co-production. In the Forum’s first editions, only a clutch of projects came to San Sebastian with overseas partners attached. Now it’s seven out of 17. Far more producers recognise the virtues and know the mechanisms of international co-production. Hence even feature debuts, such as Juan Pablo Felix’s Los dias segun ellos, set up at Bikini Films, hit San Sebastian with strong partners: Veronica Cura’s
Utopia Group, Santiago Segura’s Bowfinger Intl. Pictures in Spain, and France’s Melocoton Film.
6. Globalization: Iniciales SG is helmed by Lebanon’s Rania Attieh and Texan Daniel Garcia, produced by Argentina’s Frutacine, takes in Brazil’s 2014 World Cup, and stars
Diego Parietti as an Argentine porn actor who thinks he’s like France’s Serge Gainsbourg, Attieh said Monday in San Sebastian.
7. A sea-change in Latin American cinema: The rise in its overall quality. The Forum explains why. Looking at its directors’ C.V.s, their formal education is not just as good as many young U.S. or European filmmakers, it’s the same. A case in point: Brazil’s Giuliana Monteiro, at the Forum with her first feature film, Road to Livramento, studied at Tisch School of Arts and is the recipient of a BAFTA Fellowship.
8. Running a Forum and Films in Progress pix-in-post showcase, San Sebastian “aims to support films at different stages of their making,” said festival director Jose Luis Rebordinos.
No wishful thinking. Just one of multiple examples: A 2014 Forum entry, Chilean Fernando Guzzoni’s Jesus plays in San Sebastian’s 2016 competition.
9. Mostly lacking strong public broadcasters, Latin America’s vibrant documentary production remains anchored most often in feature filmmaking. The Forum bears that out with three docu-features: La Mami, from Mexico-based Spaniard Luara Herrero Garvin; Suarez’s Two Degrees From Autumn, from Spain’s El Dedo en el Ojo (Not All is Vigil, Paula); and Sandra Gugliotta’s Suicidios telefonicas, a chronicle of the mobbing tactics used to slash head-count at Argentina’s telcos, privatised from 1990.
10. Some young filmmakers - Venezuela’s George Walker Torres (Sin Vuelta) in Black Dog- still favour coming-of-age tales. Produced by Venezuela’s Cine Cercano/Películas Prescindibles. Other Forum titles project a world where parents are absent - as in Hogar,
set in a nun’s home for teenage mothers.
Suggesting the consolidation of a new inflexion in Latin America filmmaking, however, more Forum features consider regeneration in a crisis-ridden world. In 7:35, two former students attempt to track down the author of their school massacre, seeking closure. In Las hijas
de Alonso, two Costa Rican daughters seek out their father, who disappeared off the map in Panama a decade earlier. At least a trio of potential features - Irene, Una periodista and La Civil - portray strong female protagonists who seek positive social change. All is not lost for Latin America.
JOHN HOPEWELL
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