Sponsors
Partner
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).
Calls for entries Log-in to MY FESTIVAL 
Agenda Programme and tickets Search 
The XVI International Film Students Meeting, to take place from September 25 to 29, in the framework of the 65th edition of the San Sebastian Festival, has selected, from the 209 works submitted by 110 schools in 45 countries, fourteen short films from Argentina, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Spain and the USA.
The Meeting, organised by the San Sebastian Festival and Tabakalera - International Centre for Contemporary Culture, has the objective of presenting the work of students from film schools all over the world, the next generation of filmmakers. This year, the section grows both in duration - with an extra day, bringing it up to five - and ambition, reflecting the strong commitment of its organisers. The event also comes with a suggestive programme of activities including the visit of outstanding film industry professionals who will present their films in San Sebastian, such as Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon (Wonderstruck in Pearls), Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret (12 jours / 12 Days in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera), José Luis Torres Leiva (El sueño de Ana / Ana’s Dream in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera), Marine Francen (Le Semeur / The Sower in New Directors) and Nobuhiro Suwa (Le lion est mort ce soir / The Lion Sleeps Tonight in the Official Selection). The Chilean filmmaker will also chair the Jury of the XVI Film Students Meeting.
Both the screenings of the selected short films and the masterclasses will take place in the Tabakalera cinema. The masterclasses, including screenings of works by the filmmakers and conversations with the film team, are sessions reserved for students and a limited number of spectators, who can attend by registering on the Tabakalera website, and accredited Festival guests, through invitations, while the tickets for the different short film showings can be acquired through the regular San Sebastian Festival sales channels.
“The San Sebastian Festival maintains its commitment to divulging new talents and the International Film Students Meeting is one of the cornerstones of that commitment”, said the San Sebastian Festival Director, José Luis Rebordinos, at a press conference held today in Tabakalera.
The Cultural Director of Tabakalera, Ane Rodríguez, underlined the importance of projects of this kind being able to develop in the framework of an event such as the Festival and in the context of a centre like Tabakalera, whose cultural project is “firmly committed to new creators”.
A jury made up of students, chaired by a teacher and selected by the Orona Fundazioa will give the Orona Award with 5,000 euros.
Furthermore, a specific jury made up of students from the participating schools and chaired by the Chilean filmmaker José Luis Torres Leiva will decide to which filmmaker it will give the Panavision Award, carrying a complete camera package including a RED Epic camera and Primo standard lenses for four weeks of filming, or a voucher worth €10,000 for renting any kind of Panavision material.
The International Film Students Meeting is part of the legacy of San Sebastian 2016, European Capital of Culture.
SHORT FILMS
Janka is on the verge of puberty. One day she goes to dance practice with her friend Zorana. While Zorana is preoccupied with topics such as kissing, new clothes, and parties, Janka is trying to retain her childish innocence for as long as possible. But she can't escape the inevitable changes every girl has to undergo.
Another nearly-ordinary winter day in the life of 64-year-old Doron, director of a municipal home for the aged: the rain is pouring, someone nabbed his reserved parking spot, and Bela Schorr, occupant of Room 212, passed away that morning.
In the hot month of August, Alice and her siblings go to their grandmother's summer house. As the days go by, the house becomes a hive of slow straying bodies, as Alice becomes more and more ingrained in her grandmother's colonial past.
In a wild landscape Vera and Matteo live their first date of love. The girl's father surprises them and assaults the boy. At the end of a fierce fight Matteo knocks down man. Vera asks the boy to take her to dance. Matteo, shaken, runs away.
"In Afghanistan, I saw a couple making love on a roof": we know very little of the day-to-day work of the pilots carrying out "targeted assassinations" with military drones. Three Americans agreed to testify in voiceover about their experience, which is paradoxically one of intimacy and cruelty, over aerial images that they could have filmed themselves, to "Find, Fix, Finish"
Fiora and Martina are preparing lunch. The situation is a staging of the real ties that bind them. As they eat, Fiora comes back over a past occurrence. Martina wants to know more and decides to question her.
Right-wing populism is spreading through Western Europe like wildfire. It is most popular in quiet, white neighbourhoods where people are shielded from different cultures and lifestyles. In this unscripted documentary, Sam Peeters portrays an ironic caricature of life in the Flemish suburbs, which reflects the current European zeitgeist.
A typical family is being watched in their own home. The father, an accomplice to the situation, obliges the other members of the family group to participate in the dynamic. The mother tries to escape with her daughters, but to no avail.
Colombia is a land of ghosts. Two siblings roam these mystical landscapes in search of their dead father's spirit. Their journey takes them from Bogota to the Colombian jungle, through realms of thought and deep into their haunted dreams. Here they will find some answers and attract unexpected company.
An offer of a job as a prison educator could help unemployed teacher Jakub resolve a difficult family situation. His father-in-law exacerbates his already low self-confidence, and the man most certainly imagined a different kind of son-in-law. The claustrophobic feelings Jakub experiences at the prison, however, lead him to a single question: Does he want to control others the rest of his life or be controlled by them?
Dan Daily lives in the middle of the Texas desert where, in 2009, he opened a retreat for children who had killed their parents. Wandervogel starts when two documentary-makers arrive at Dailey’s house to shoot a film and find him dead.
Filatov comes back home after a lengthy absence to bury his brother. He should pick up his brother's body from the neighboring village and bring it home.
It's the 23rd of June 2016. In the UK, a critical referendum is well underway, and across the Atlantic, an ominous American presidential campaign is gathering force. In Sweden, news broadcasting is carrying on as usual. In Germany, however, an identical, yet distorted, news broadcast is simultaneously being constructed by the citizens themselves.
MASTERCLASSES
Monday 25, from 11:15 to 13:15,
screening and masterclass by Raymond Depardon & Claudine Nougaret, director and producer of 12 jours (12 Days) (Zabaltegi-Tabakalera)
Raymond Depardon (1942) is a prestigious French photographer and director. He has directed twenty feature-length films and more than fifty books of his photography have been published. Co-founder of the Gamma agency and photographer with Magnum, as a reporter he has covered some of the major news events worldwide. In 1991 he was honoured with the Grand Prix National de la Photographie. He has won the César for Best Documentary twice, for Reporters (1981) and Délits Flagrants (1994). Among his latest works are La Vie moderne (Modern Life,2008), Journal de France (2012) and Les habitants (2016).
For thirty years, Claudine Nougaret and Raymond Depardon have shared their passion for cinema and photography, she working on sound and production, he on the photography and direction. Self-taught artists, they founded their own production company Palmeraie et désert, and together they have created numerous films, notably: Urgences(1988), La captive du desert (Captive of the Desert, Cannes 1990), Délits flagrants (Caught in the Act,1994), Afriques, comment ça va avec la douleur ? (Africa, How Are You with Pain?, 1996), Paris (1998), Profils Paysans: l’approche (2000), 10e chamber – Instants d’audience (The 10th Judicial Court: Judicial Hearings,2004), Profils Paysans: le quotidien (2005), Profils Paysans: La Vie moderne (Modern Life, 2008), Journal de France (2012), France (2016) and 12 Jours (12 Days,2017). From the beginning, Claudine Nougaret has favoured direct sound in her productions. After studying musicology, she worked as a projectionist while taking evening classes in sound at the Collège Louis Lumière. She learned the ropes of her trade as sound assistant on films by Alain Resnais, Gérard Junot, Chabrol, Claude Miller. In 1986, she was responsible for the sound recording on Éric Rohmer’s The Green Ray, winner of that year’s Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and established herself as one of French cinema’s preeminent female sound recordists. Further credits include Philippe Garrel’s Les baisers de secours and La Nage indienneby Xavier Durringer, amongst others. With Sophie Chiabaut she co-authored Le son direct au cinéma, published by Éditions La Fémis, before devoting herself to the films she produces for Raymond Depardon, documentaries to which she brings the skill and technical demands of feature film sound engineering.
Tuesday 26, from 15:00 to 18:00,
screening and masterclass by Todd Haynes & Christine Vachon, director and producer of Wonderstruck (Pearls)
Acclaimed screenwriter and director Todd Haynes debuted in feature films with Poison (1991), Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, followed by Safe (1995), listed best film of the 90s by Village Voice. Velvet Goldmine (1998) won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and Far from Heaven (2002) landed four Academy Award nominations. In I’m Not There he imagined the life and work of Bob Dylan through seven fictitious characters and in 2015 he adapted Patricia Highsmith with Carol, nominated for Academy Awards in six categories. Wonderstruck premiered at the last Cannes Festival.
Christine Vachon is an Independent Spirit Award and Gotham Award winner who co-founded the indie powerhouse Killer Films with partner Pamela Koffler in 1995. Over the past two decades, they have produced more than 100 films and some of the most celebrated American indie features including: Carol (nominated for six Academy Awards), Far from Heaven (nominated for four Academy Awards), Still Alice (Academy Award winner), Boys Don’t Cry (Academy Award winner), One Hour Photo, Kids, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Happiness, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, I Shot Andy Warhol and I’m Not There (Academy Award nominated). In television, Vachon executive-produced the Emmy and Golden Globe winning mini-series Mildred Pierce for HBO. Other recent work includes: Goat, Wiener-Dog, White Girl and Beatriz at Dinner. Killer Films recently produced Z: The Beginning of Everything starring Christina Ricci for Amazon Studios, as well as Todd Haynes’ latest film, Wonderstruck. They are currently in post-production on Paul Schrader's latest feature, First Reformed. Vachon is also the director of the MFA program at Stony Brook University. Vachon was the president of the Official Jury in San Sebastian in 2012.
Wednesday 27, from 16:00 to 18:00,
screening and masterclass by José Luis Torres Leiva, director of El sueño de Ana (Anna’s Dream,Zabaltegi-Tabakalera) and Obreras saliendo de la fábrica (Women Workers leaving the Factory)
José Luis Torres Leiva has made several independent shorts and features, such as Ningún lugar en ninguna parte (2004), El tiempo que se queda (2007), Tres semanas después (2010), Ver y escuchar (2013) and Qué historia es ésta y cuál es su final (2013). El cielo, la tierra y la lluvia (The Sky, the Earth and the Rain,2008), his first full-length feature, premiered at Rotterdam, where it received the FIPRESCI Prize. The second, Verano (2011), was released in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Festival. El viento sabe que vuelvo a casa (The Wind Knows I’m Coming Back Home)participated in Zabaltegi at the San Sebastian Festival in 2016.
Thursday 28, from 16:00 to 18:15,
screening and masterclass by Marine Francen, director of Le Semeur / The Sower (New Directors)
Having spent her childhood in the countryside, Marine Francen moved to Paris to study literature and history. She discovered the film industry on landing a production job for the company of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant and later, between 1999 and 2012, worked as an assistant director for filmmakers including Olivier Assayas and Michael Haneke, among others. She has written and directed four short films, one of them a documentary, before debuting in the feature-length format with Le Semeur / The Sower.
Friday 29, from 11:00 to 13:30,
screening and masterclass by Nobuhiro Suwa, director of Le lion est mort ce soir / The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Official Selection)
Nobuhiro Suwa directed in 1997 his first film, 2/Duo, presented at festivals including Rotterdam and Vancouver. His second work, M/Other (1999) carried off the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Festival. With H Story (2003), also premiered at Cannes, he revisited Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour. Un couple parfait (2005), his first film outside Japan, received the Special Jury Prize at Locarno. In 2006 he directed one of the segments of the collective film Paris, je t’aime and in 2009 he returned to Cannes with Yuki & Nina.
Videos
Images
Monday to friday: 09:00h a 14:00h | 16:00h a 19:00h