The Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino will be the president of the Official Selection Jury at San Sebastian Festival’s 68th edition. The filmmaker, who will present the world premiere, out of competition, of the series We Are Who We Are,will be accompanied by the Spanish producer Marisa Fernández Armenteros, the Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco and the Swedish costume director Lena Mossum. The Festival will soon announce who will be the fifth member of the Jury of the Official Selection.

Luca Guadagnino (Palermo, Italy. 1971) is a director, screenwriter, producer and artistic entrepreneur. In 1999 he made his directorial debut with The Protagonists (1999), shown in Venice. Later came Melissa P (2005), Io sono l’amore (I Am Love, 2009), nominated for the Best Costume Design Academy Award and the Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film, and A Bigger Splash (2015), with which he competed in Venice. In 2017 he enjoyed his greatest success with Call Me by Your Name, which landed the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award and a Best Film nomination. In 2018 he directed the remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. We Are Who We Are is an 8-episode TV series made for HBO-SKY.

Some jury members of the other sections will be confirmed soon.  

• Luca Guadagnino (President)
• Marisa Fernández Armenteros
• Michel Franco
• Lena Mossum

• Belén Funes (President)
• Aistė Diržiūtė
• Ariel Schweitzer

• Jayro Bustamante (President)
• Celia Rico
• Valérie Delpierre

• Pucho
• Carlos Rodríguez Ríos

• Maider Oleaga (President)
• Irati Crespo
• Diego Soto Ortiz

• Francy Fabritz
• Tomás Paula Marques
• Viktor van der Valk

• Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza
• Nadia Turincev
• Olmo Figueredo

‘The World to Come’ and ‘Nomadland’ 

In addition, two films coming from the Venice Mostra, Nomadland and The World to Come, will complete the list of Perlak, the section showcasing works to have received acclaim and/or awards at other international festivals. In this case, the audience plays the part of the jury by voting for their favourite feature film from among the ten competing for the City of Donostia/San Sebastian Audience Award, which comes in two parts: one for best film (50,000 euros) and the other for best European film (20,000 euros).

Nomadland is the work of the Chinese-North American director and screenwriter Chloé Zhao (Zhao Ting, 1982), author of Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) and The Rider (2017), winner of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. Starred and produced by the actor Frances McDormand, Zhao’s third work is an adaptation of the book of the same name by the journalist Jessica Bruder, investigating the phenomenon of the people who travel the USA like nomads in search of work.    

For her part, Mona Fastvold (Oslo, 1981), the Norwegian director living in New York who debuted with The Sleepwalker (2014), will close Perlak out of competition with her second feature film, also a competitor for the Golden Lion in Venice, including in its cast Katherine Waterston, Vanessa Kirby, Christopher Abbott and Casey Affleck, who is also its producer. The World to Come is a 19th century drama set somewhere on America’s East Coast, where two neighbouring couples struggle with hardship and isolation in a beautiful and difficult landscape.   

The other nine Perlak titles already announced will be Wife of a Spy, the opening film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, ADN / DNA by Maïwenn; El agente topo / The Mole Agent by Maite Alberdi; Herself by Phyllida Lloyd; Miss Marx by Susanna Nicchiarelli; Nam-mae wui Yeo-reum-bam / Moving On by Yoon Dan-bi; Never Rarely Sometimes Always by Eliza Hittman; Nuevo orden / New Order by Michel Franco; and The Father by Florian Zeller.