The Perlak section at the 67th edition of the San Sebastian Festival will include ten new titles, among which are the latest works by Casey Affleck, Robert Eggers, Hirokazu Koreeda, Pablo Larraín, Céline Sciamma, Makoto Shinkai and Steven Soderbergh, alongside other filmmakers. Furthermore, The Climb, a comedy directed by Michael Angelo Covino, will close the section out of competition.

The 2018 Donostia Award-winner Hirokazu Koreeda (Tokyo, 1962) will present La vérité (The Truth) only a few days after opening the competition at the Venice Mostra. Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche will play a mother and daughter in full swing of their score-settling in the latest film by the director who competed in San Sebastian Festival’s Official Selection with Wandafuru raifu (After Life, 1998), Hana yori mo naho (Hana, 2006), Aruitemo, aruitemo (Still Walking, 2008) and Kiseki (I Wish, Best Screenplay Award, 2011). He also won the Audience Award with Soshite chichi ni naru (Like Father, Like Son, 2013) and with Umimachi Diary (Our Little Sister, 2015). 

Another competitor in the Italian festival is Steven Soderbergh (Atlanta, USA, 1963), presenting The Laundromat, starring Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas. This time round, the author of films including Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), Erin Brockovich (2000) and Ocean’s Eleven (2001) has chosen a plot focussed on the Panama Papers, the investigation into important personalities with rogue offshore holdings in tax havens.  

Pablo Larraín (Santiago de Chile, 1976) will compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award with Ema, a feature film competing in Venice about a couple dealing with the consequences of a failed adoption. In the last decade, the Chilean director has participated in Horizontes Latinos with Tony Manero (2007), Post Mortem (2010) and El club (The Club, 2015), and in Perlak with No (2012) and Neruda (2016).

Moreover, Ciro Guerra (Río de Oro, Colombia, 1981) will also compete for the Golden Lion with his first feature film in English, Waiting for the Barbarians, an adaptation of the book of the same name by J.M. Coetzee starring Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp and Robert Pattinson, among others. All of the Colombian director’s previous works have screened at San Sebastian. He won Films in Progress with La sombra del caminante (The Wandering Shadow), which screened the following year in New Directors, and later returned with Los viajes del viento (The Wind Journeys, Horizontes Latinos, 2009), El abrazo de la serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent, Horizontes Latinos, 2015) and Pájaros de verano (Birds of Passage, Perlak, 2018).

A number of works previously screened at the Cannes Festival will also be included. Having presented Naissance des pieuvres (Water Lilies, Un Certain Regard, 2007), Tomboy (Berlin Panorama, 2011) and Bande de filles (Girlhood, Quinzaine des Realisateurs and Perlak, 2014), Céline Sciamma (Pontoise, France, 1980) will show Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, tale of the relationship between an artist and her model, winner of the Best Screenplay award at the French competition. The Un Certain Regard selection saw the participation of The Climb, feature film debut by the actor and producer Michael Angelo Covino, who will close Perlak out of competition with this film about the long and picturesque friendship between two men over years of laughter, heartbreak and rage.

The Lighthouse, the eagerly-awaited second film from Robert Eggers (Lee, USA, 1983) following The Witch (2015), stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, now in the role of two lighthouse keepers on a distant island who slip slowly downwards into madness. Set in the early 19th century, this film shot in black and white won the Fipresci Prize at the Cannes Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, the section in which the Europa Cinemas Label Award also went to director Nicolas Pariser (Paris, 1974). Having made his feature film debut with Le grand jeu (The Great Game, 2015), he now directs Alice et le maire (Alice and the Mayor), where an elderly mayor (Fabrice Luchini) contacts a brilliant philosopher (Anaïs Demoustier) to fill a sort of existential void.  

Perlak will also screen a film premiered in Berlin’s Panorama section. Following his debut on the other side of the camera with I’m Still Here (2010), actor Casey Affleck (Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA, 1975) directs and stars Light of My Life, a film about the journey of a father and his daughter in a world from which women have virtually disappeared. Lastly, following its release in Japan and imminent screening in Toronto, San Sebastian will host the European premiere of Tenki no ko / Weathering With You, the latest animated film from Makoto Shinkai (Nagano, Japan, 1973), helmer of works including Hoshi o ou kodomo (Journey to Agartha, 2011) and Kimi no Na wa / Your Name (2016), a former European premiere in San Sebastian’s Official Selection.

These ten titles join the eight already announced, signed by Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole), Alan Elliott and Sidney Pollack (Amazing Grace), Bong Joon-Ho (Gisaengchung / Parasite), Ken Loach (Sorry We Missed You), Ladj Ly (Les Misérables), Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano (Hors normes / The Specials), Oliver Laxe (O que arde / Fire Will Come) and Wang Xiaoshuai (Di jiu tian chang / So Long, My Son). All of the works compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award, which includes two prizes: one for best film (50,000 euros) and the other for best European film (20,000 euros).