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).
The San Sebastian Festival blew out its 70th anniversary candles and sang Happy Birthday at its opening gala, presented last night at the Kursaal by the actress Loreto Mauleón and the actor and director Paco León. The ceremony focused on the Festival’s anniversary, but also paid tribute to an audience that has consistently supported it over seven decades.
The gala began with Mauleón and León in a video montage transformed into characters from a Franco-period newsreel, after which they invited up on stage four women who had taken part in the first Festival in 1953 as dancers with the Goizaldi group. The actress Cayetana Guillén Cuervo stressed the significant presence of Spanish cinema in all the sections while her colleague Belén Cuesta presented the FIPRESCI Grand Prix of 2022 which went to Drive My Car, by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi.
As usual, the Festival also presented the members of the Official Jury: the filmmaker Antoinette Boulat, the director and screenwriter Tea Lindeburg, the writer and journalist Rosa Montero, the filmmaker and visual artist Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, the director and screenwriter Hlynur Pálmason and the producer Matías Mosteirín, the president of the jury, who defined cinema as “a multitude of voices and ways of seeing the world, in black and white, in colour, in silence or in turmoil”.
“Those of us who form part of the film community today have, more than ever, the task of fighting intolerance using critical thinking. Doubting ourselves and remembering that we may sometimes be wrong. I invite you at this year’s San Sebastian Festival to join us in celebrating freedom and contradiction and the ability to engage in discussion from different viewpoints”, Mosteirín said.
After the director, Alberto Rodríguez, and the actors Miguel Herrán and Javier Gutiérrez had presented the film Modelo 77 / Prison 77, which opened the Official Selection out of competition, the hosts invited the audience to sing Happy Birthday in Basque and to blow out two giant candles with the number 70 that appeared on the screen.