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).
Thirty-three years ago the San Sebastián Festival took a decision that, as time has gone by, has become one of the hallmarks of the event: the organization of a retrospective devoted to a leading figure in classic cinema who had been unfairly forgotten or received little recognition from the critics and the public. In all this time numerous filmmakers have been vindicated or rediscovered by the Festival, but this list has been devalued by an absence that is difficult to accept for a festival that has always been the main gateway for Latin American cinema into Europe: no Latin American filmmaker had ever been honoured up to now in these retrospectives. This shortcoming has now been rectified with the choice of the director Roberto Gavaldón. The aim of this was not just to honor Latin American cinema as a whole but also to specifically pay homage to the so-called Golden Age of Mexican cinema.
At the presentation of the book that accompanies this retrospective, the authors Quim Casas and Ana Cristina Iriarte both said a few words. On behalf of the Festival, Casas explained how they had recovered nineteen films that represent all his periods from the 1940s to the 1970s. Iriarte pointed out that they had asked for all of Gavaldón’s available films but because of the quality of the copies or because they had been lost, the final selection had been restricted to the nineteen films in the retrospective.