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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Zabaltegi - Tabakalera
Films
Films
Zabaltegi Tabakalera
Zabaltegi Tabakalera
Terence Davies
UK - Belgium
126 min.
Who was Emily Dickinson? Who hid behind the poet who spent most of her life at her parents’ home in Amherst, Massachusetts? The mansion where she lived provides the backdrop to the portrait of an unconventional woman who we know very little about. Born in 1803, she was considered to be a talented child, but an emotional trauma forced her to abandon her studies. From that moment on she withdrew from society and began to write poems. Despite her solitary life, the writer’s work takes the reader on a fascinating journey around the world.
Bertrand Tavernier
France
190 min.
Bertrand Tavernier loves cinema. Along the lines of A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, Tavernier presents us with a sharp and personal approach to French cinema, the films, directors, composers and dialogues he has loved most in his life. From Jean Renoir to Claude Sautet, from Henri Decoin to Jacques Becker, casting an eye over François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle and many other famous moviemakers on the way, Bertrand Tavernier treats us to a fresh look at the gems of cinema.
Hayoun KWON
© Hayoun KWON
Hayoun Kwon
France
12 min.
Short film
An animated short film, winner of an award at the 62nd Oberhausen International Festival, 489 Years uses the testimony provided by Kim, a former soldier from South Korea, to give us access to the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, plunging us into the heart of the soldier’s personal memories. Kim tells us about his experiences on a research mission and the amazing discovery he made in a field full of mines (laid by South Korea with no record of where they were placed). He talks about a place where people are forbidden, and where nature has totally regained its hold…
Marilia Rocha
Brazil - Portugal
99 min.
Francisca, a young Portuguese woman living in Brazil, welcomes Teresa, an old acquaintance she'd lost contact with, into her home. While Teresa discovers the place where she means to settle, Francisca craves for her life back in Lisbon.
Mikel Rueda
Spain
14 min.
Short film
A road in the middle of nowhere. A car. A bike. Two lonely people looking for the same thing. They meet. World premiere.
Thorsten Schüte
France - Germany
93 min.
An intimate meeting with this musician and iconoclastic composer. Through unpublished footage, the spectator takes part in the provocation of this twentieth century genius whose way of understanding the world still is prevailing.
Paz Encina
Argentina - Paraguay - France - Germany - Qatar
70 min.
Paraguay suffered one of the longest dictatorships in Latin America (1954-1989). Agustín Goiburú was the most important political opponent to the Stroessner regime. This documentary tries to enter a whole political context through the memories of Agustín Goiburú's three children.
Pablo Álvarez
Chile
25 min.
Short film
Partly a symphony of a city, partly an experimental film and, to some extent, a fake documentary. A set of images show the centre of Santiago at night, to retrace the steps of an absent an anonymous character. Different background voices try to describe this person through unconnected stories and they often contradict each other. The result is the vague reconstruction of an absent man. He is a stranger who embodies a déclassé and careeism character rooted in the depths of Chilean society. A desire to exercise power over the rest shown through different forms of violence.
José Luis Torres Leiva
Chile
103 min.
The Chilean documentary maker Ignacio Agüero is preparing his first fictional feature film based on an old documentary project that he never completed. In the early 1980s, on the island of Meulín, in the Chiloé region, a young couple disappears in the woods in the area totally without trace. A myth developed around this mysterious tragic love story. Ignacio Agüero will travel to the scene of the crime in search of locations and non-professional actors to finally gradually discover how his film is going to develop.
Jim Jarmusch
USA
108 min.
The powerful aggressive rock 'n' roll of The Stooges, who came out of Ann Arbor (Michigan) during the countercultural revolution, was like a bombshell on the music scene of the late 1960s. With their fusion of rock, blues, R&B and free jazz, the band that Iggy Pop started out in laid the foundations for what would later be known as alt-rock. Gimme Danger tells the epic story of The Stooges and presents the context in which one of the most important rock bands of all time evolved musically, culturally, politically, and historically, through their adventures and joys and sorrows, and recalls their sources of inspiration and the reasons for the early commercial challenges they faced.
María Elorza (Las chicas de Pasaik), Maider Fernandez Iriarte (Las chicas de Pasaik)
Spain
15 min.
Short film
The neighbourhood of Housewives. The district of Insomniacs. The newsstand of the Unknown Mother. The underground of The Lonely Women. Our walls pay tribute to the people we love.
Lav Diaz
Philippines
480 min.
Various interconnected narrative threads on the Philippine Revolution of 1896-1897 against the Spanish colonial government make up Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis / A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery: the story of the ballad of Jocelynang Baliwag, which became the hymn of the revolution; Gregoria de Jesús’s desperate search for the body of the father of the Philippine Revolution, Andrés Bonifacio; the journey of the national heroes Simon and Isagani, who are fictional characters; and the role of the mythical hero of the Philippine resistance, Bernardo Carpio, and the half-man, half-horse Tikbalang / Engkanto in the Philippine psyche. This film represents a fusion of history, literature and mythology.
Chema García Ibarra
Turkey
12 min.
Short film
Saturday, April. Nice weather. The shadow of the mountain grows as evening falls. Five boys get ready for the evening: they have booze, a car and music. No matter if the disco shut down years ago.
Jean-François Laguionie
France - Canada
75 min.
On the last day of summer, Louise, an old woman realizes that the last train has departed without her. She finds herself alone in a small seaside resort town, abandoned by everyone. The weather quickly turns for the worse followed by the seasonal tides. Fragile and coquettish, not nearly as well-prepared as a would-be Robinson Crusoe, Louise isn’t likely to make it through the winter. Yet, Louise takes her abandonment as a challenge. She’s going to survive, confronting the elements as well as her memories, which have found the perfect occasion to join in the adventure…
Jeff Nichols
USA
111 min.
What starts as a race from religious extremists and local law enforcement quickly escalates to a nationwide manhunt involving the highest levels of the Federal Government. Roy is a father who will ultimately risk everything to protect his eight year-old son Alton and help fulfil a destiny that could change the world forever in this genre-defying film as supernatural as it is intimately human.
Not in competition
João Pedro Rodrigues
Portugal - France - Brazil
118 min.
Fernando, a solitary ornithologist, is looking for endangered black storks along a remote river in northern Portugal, when he is swept away by the rapids. Rescued by a couple of Chinese pilgrim girls on their way to Santiago de Compostela, he plunges into a dark, eerie forest, trying to get back on track. But as he encounters unexpected and uncanny obstacles and people who put him to the test, Fernando is driven to extreme, transformative actions. Gradually he becomes a different man: inspired, multifaceted, and finally enlightened.
Felipe Guerrero
Colombia - Argentina - Netherlands - Germany - Greece
107 min.
Oscuro animal tells the tale of a voyage from the jungle to the city by three women obliged to flee from the harrassment of Colombia’s rural war. Each will undertake her own journey in search of peace and quiet. Arriving in Bogotá, they will draw breath before tackling the new period of their lost lives.
Bertrand Bonello
France
24 min.
Short film
An opera ballet that doesn't exist. A ghost-like piece, played in Opera Bastille and danced at Opera Garnier. An almost mystical link between both scenes. A musician is testing sounds in Bastille's pit. The choir are taking their place in the rehearsal studio. Both sides are fine tuning the work in progress of an opera ballet: Sarah Winchester, her grief, her madness, her home and her ghosts.
Koldo Almandoz
Spain
69 min.
An hour-long cruise, the meta-filmic essay of a vampire moviemaker, a ghost film. The story of the search for a place gives rise to discoveries that lead to other searches. F.W. Murnau and his movie Nosferatu; the love triangle between Bram Stoker, his wife Florence Balcombe and his boyfriend Oscar Wilde. Famous shipwrecks, holidays on board a ship. The stolen bust from a grave, reflections on history and cinema. A tale of Russian dolls who conceal gothic fiction, documentary realism and video essay. Narrative collage with fragments of books, letters, reports, announcements, telegrams, press cuttings, film extracts, puppets. A mirror game with real and fictional vampires; loneliness, dehumanisation, social control. And in the middle of it all, the novel Dracula; its main character, its structure, its background. Premiere at Rotterdam Film Festival.
Jia Zhang-ke
China
26 min.
Short film
An engaging drama about several unemployed Shanxi coalminers looking for work.
Deborah Stratman
USA
60 min.
An experimental documentary. Eleven parables recount events from the history of the state of Illinois: regional vignettes about faith, force, technology and exodus. From the violent eviction of the Cherokee to the establishment of a utopian community of French Icarians, the invention of the nuclear reactor, and the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, the film relays histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Illinois functions here as a convenient structural ruse, allowing its histories to become allegories that explore how societies are shaped by conviction and ideology.
Aaron Brookner
UK
96 min.
Howard Brookner's first film, Burroughs: The Movie, captured the cultural revolution of downtown New York City in the early '80s. Now in a personal journey, his nephew Aaron unearths Howard's filmmaking legacy and the memory of everything he was.
Todd Solondz
USA
89 min.
Wiener-Dog tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading a certain kind of comfort and joy. Man’s best friend starts out teaching a young boy some contorted lessons before being taken in by a compassionate vet tech named Dawn Wiener. Dawn reunites with someone from her past and sets off on a road trip picking up some depressed mariachis along the way. Wiener-Dog then encounters a floundering film professor, as well as an embittered elderly woman and her needy granddaughter—all longing for something more.
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