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 
There will be two screenings out of competition ‘Titane’, by Ducournau, and ‘Drive My Car’, by Hamaguchi
The section will also screen the debuts of Shipei Wen and Charlotte Gainsbourg, as well as the second feature directed by the writer Emmanuel Carrère
The Perlak section of the San Sebastian Festival, whose 69th edition will run from 17 to 25 September, will include a total of 15 films previously programmed at festivals such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin. Hallowed names like Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Todd Haynes, François Ozon and Paul Verhoeven will be joined by important contemporary filmmakers, such as the last Golden Palm-winner Julia Ducournau, Céline Sciamma, Sean Baker and Joachim Lafosse. The writer Emmanuel Carrère will present her second fiction as a director, while the debuts by Shipei Wen and Charlotte Gainsbourg will also screen.
Opening and closing films
Competencia oficial (Official Competition) the comedy with which Gastón Duprat & Mariano Cohn will shortly participate in the Venice Mostra, will open Perlak in competition. The Argentine directors, makers of titles including El artista (The Artist, 2008), El hombre de al lado (The Man Next Door, 2009), El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen, 2016) and Todo sobre el asado (Culinary Zinema, 2016), will present this tragicomedy set in the world of cinema. Penélope Cruz plays an eccentric filmmaker alongside Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez in their respective roles of Hollywood actor and a radical thespian.
Apart from the competition for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award, the section will close with a documentary screened out of competition at the recent Festival de Cannes, The Velvet Underground, in which Todd Haynes analyses the significance of the famous rock band fronted by Lou Reed. The North American director, president of San Sebastian’s official jury in 2013, has helmed award winning films that include Far from Heaven (2002), I’m Not There (2007) –a free recreation of Bob Dylan’s life–, Carol (2015) and Wonderstruck (Perlak, 2017).
Special screenings out of competition
Perlak will include two special screenings out of competition in recognition of two of year’s most important films, highly acclaimed at the last Cannes Festival: Titane, by the French director Julia Ducournau, and Drive My Car, by the Japanese helmer Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Ducournau, the second woman to earn the Golden Palm in the history of the French festival, and who debuted with the genre movie Raw / Grave (2016) now returns with Titane, another unclassifiable hotchpotch of genres starring Agathe Rouselle and Vincent Lindon.
Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, Drive My Car, winner of the best screenplay accolade and FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes, Hamaguchi now addresses the tale of a theatre actor and director who accepts to stage Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya while struggling to recover from a personal drama. Hamaguchi, who formerly competed in the French festival with Netemo Sametemo / Asako I & II (Perlak, 2018), presented his first film, Passion (2008), in New Directors.
The competing ‘pearls’
Hamaguchi will participate twice in Perlak due to also presenting Guzen to sozo / Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, winner of this year’s Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale. The film, which will compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award alongside the others making up the section, is a triptych of tales linked by memory, deceit and fate.
The French director Céline Sciamma, who brought Bande de filles / Girlhood (TVE-Otra mirada Award, 2014) and Portrait de la jeune fille en feu / Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) to Perlak, returns to the section with Petite maman, narrating the friendship between young girls and which also competed in the Berlin Official Selection.
Also competing in Perlak are three directors who have competed in San Sebastian Festival’s Official Selection in recent years and whose latest works screened at Cannes: Joachim Lafosse, François Ozon and Louis Garrel. On the one hand, Lafosse shows in Les intranquilles / The Restless how mental illness affects a couple’s relationship. The Belgian moviemaker, author of titles such as Nue propriété / Private Property (2006) and À perdre la raison / Our Children (2012), garnered the Silver Shell for best director with Les chevaliers blancs / The White Knights (2015), while L’économie du couple / After Love (2016) participated in Perlak.
François Ozon, winner of the Golden Shell and Jury Prize for best screenplay with Dans la maison (In the House,2012), brings a drama on euthanasia which competed at Cannes, Tout s’est bien passé / Everything Went Fine. Other titles by the French filmmaker to have screened at San Sebastián are Sous le sable / Under the Sand (2000), a competitor in the Official Selection, like Le réfuge / The Refuge (Special Jury Prize, 2009), Jeune et jolie / Young and Promising (2013), Une nouvelle amie / The New Girlfriend (2014) and Été 85 / Summer of 85 (2020).
Louis Garrel directs and stars in La croisade / The Crusade, the tale of a mysterious project where children all over the world set out to save the planet. This is the third feature from the French director and actor following Les deux amis / Two Friends (2015) and L'homme fidèle / A Faithful Man (2018), which landed Garrel San Sebastian’s Jury Prize for best screenplay, penned with the late Jean-Claude Carrière. The screenplay of La croisade, premiered in the Special Screenings section at Cannes, is also signed by both and stars the same characters as L’homme fidèle, played by Laetitia Casta, Joseph Engel and Louis Garrel.
The Cannes Special Screenings also programmed the debut from the Chinese filmmaker Shipei Wen, Re Dai Wang Shi / Are You Lonesome Tonight?, defined as a hypnotic and twisted thriller, and as an exciting exploration of guilt and mercy, of forgiveness and redemption.
Another title coming from the Cannes competition is Red Rocket, a feature film by Sean Baker narrating the return of a retired porn star to his Texas hometown. The North American moviemaker is the author of features including Tangerine (2015) and The Florida Project (2017), which screened in Perlak.
Also coming from the Cannes Official Selection is Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta, setting the tale of a miracle-performing nun in the 15th century. The moviemaker from the Netherlands, whose film Basic Instinct (1992) screened in 2011 as part of the American Way of Death: American film noir 1990-2010 retrospective, returns to Perlak after Elle (2015).
Fresh from the Festival de Cannes’ Premières section, Perlak will screen Jane par Charlotte / Jane by Charlotte, a documentary written and directed by the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg combining unseen footage, photographs and interviews to draw a portrait of her mother, Jane Birkin. This is the first work as a director from the English-French actress and singer.
Emmanuel Carrère, one of France’s most highly regarded authors and Princess of Asturias Award for Literature 2021, will present his second fictional film, Ouistreham / Between Two Worlds, a participant in the last Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Here, instead of adapting one of her own works, as he did in his debut La moustache (2005), he brings a free screen adaptation of the book by Florence Aubenas featuring a writer who goes undercover as a cleaner to investigate the situation of precarious work.
Xavier Giannoli, whose debut Les corps impatients / Eager Bodies (2003) screened in New Directors, will present Les illusions perdues / Lost Illusions following its showing at the coming edition of the Venice Festival. The French director, who participated in the Backwash: The Cutting Edge of French Cinema retrospective in 2009 with Les corps impatients (2003) and L’interview (1998), has adapted Honoré de Balzac’s novel about a young unknown poet as he struggles to find his way in 19th century France. The cast includes Benjamin Voisin, Xavier Dolan, Vincent Lacoste, Cécile de France, Gérard Depardieu and Jeanne Balibar.
Perlak is a selection of the year’s best films, not yet screened in Spain and critically acclaimed and/or winners of awards at other international festivals. The films compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award, which comes with two prizes for the distributor of the film in Spain: one for best film (50,000 euros) and the other for best European film (20,000 euros).
|
FILMS
In search of significance and social prestige, a billionaire businessman decides to make a film to leave his mark. To do it, he hires the best: a stellar team made up of the famous filmmaker Lola Cuevas and two renowned actors, both with enormous talent, but with even bigger egos: the Hollywood actor Félix Rivero and the radical thespian Iván Torres. Both are legends, if not exactly the best of friends. Through a series of increasingly eccentric challenges set by Lola, Felix and Iván must face not only each other, but also their own legacies.
The Velvet Underground created a new sound that changed the world of music, cementing its place as one of rock ’n’ roll’s most revered bands. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Todd Haynes, The Velvet Underground shows just how the group became a cultural touchstone representing a range of contradictions: the band is both of their time, yet timeless; literary yet realistic; rooted in high art and street culture. The film features in-depth interviews with the key players of that time combined with a treasure trove of never-before-seen performances and a rich collection of recordings, Warhol films and other experimental art that creates an immersive experience into what founding member John Cale describes as the band's creative ethos: “How to be elegant and how to be brutal.”
| SPECIAL SCREENINGS |
Yusuke Kafuku is a stage actor and a stage director. He is married to Oto, who works as a playwright. Although they have a happy marriage, Oto suddenly disappears, leaving behind a secret. Two years later, Yusuke lands a job as the director of a theatre festival and heads to Hiroshima, driving his car. There, he meets his exclusive chauffeur Misaki, a woman of few words. While spending time with her, Yusuke learns things he has ignored.
Following a series of unexplained crimes, a father is reunited with the son who has been missing for 10 years. TITANIUM: A metal highly resistant to heat and corrosion, with high tensile strength alloys.
| IN COMPETITION |
In the late 15th century, with plague ravaging the land, Benedetta Carlini joins the convent in Pescia, Tuscany, as a novice. Capable from an early age of performing miracles, Benedetta's impact on life in the community is immediate and momentous.
Three stories driven by chance and the imagination in which the lives of the female characters are marked by their choices and regrets. An unexpected love triangle, a failed seduction trap and an encounter resulting from a misunderstanding lend shape to a triptych connected by memory, deceit and fate.
With the tremor of time passing by, Charlotte Gainsbourg started to look at her mother Jane Birkin in a way she never did, both overcoming a shared sense of reserve. Through the camera lens, they expose themselves to one another, begin to step back, leaving space for a mother-daughter relationship to unfold.
Abel and Marianne discover that their 13-year-old son Joseph has secretly sold their most precious possessions. They soon find out that Joseph is not the only one - all over the world, hundreds of children have joined forces to finance a mysterious project. Their mission is to save the planet.
Lucien is a young unknown poet in 19th century France. He has great hopes and wants to forge his destiny. He leaves the family printing house in his native province to try his luck in Paris on the arm of his patroness of the arts. Quickly left to fend for himself in this fabulous town, the young man will discover what goes on behind the scenes in this world devoted to the law of profit and pretense. A human comedy where everything can be bought or sold, literary success like the press, politics like sentiments, reputations like souls.
Leila and Damien are deeply in love. Despite his bipolarity, he tries to pursue his life with her, knowing he may never be able to offer her what she desires.
Best-selling author Marianne Winckler decides to write a book about precarious working conditions and sets out to experience the reality for herself. Without revealing her true identity, she lands a job as a cleaner in a town in Normandy, in northern France, discovering a life ignored by the rest of society where every euro earned or spent counts. Despite the harshness of the situation, the solidarity between colleagues creates a strong bond of friendship between Marianne and her co-workers. Lending one another a hand leads to friendship and friendship leads to trust. But what happens to that trust when the truth comes to light?
8-year-old Nelly has just lost her grandmother. While helping her parents, she explores the surroundings of the house where her mother, Marion, used to play as a child. There she discovers the treehouse she’s heard so much about. One day her mother abruptly leaves. Nelly meets a girl her own age in the woods and together they set about building a treehouse. Her new friend is called Marion.
A young man who believes he has caused a fatal accident develops an ambiguous relationship with the dead man's widow, while a policeman tries to resolve the investigation that will change his life forever.
Mikey Saber is a washed-up porn star who returns to his small Texas hometown, not that anyone really wants him back.
Emmanuèle’s father is hospitalised following a stroke, aged 85. When he wakens, debilitated and unable to fend for himself, this man, curious by nature and with a passion for living, asks his daughter to help him end his life.
Videos
Images
Monday to friday: 09:00h a 14:00h | 16:00h a 19:00h