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).
A regular visitor to the festival since he competed in the Official Selection back in 2000 with Sous le sable, François Ozon won the Golden Shell in 2012 for Dans la Maison. This year he’s opening the Perlak section with Peter Von Kant, a personal tribute to Fassbinder’s The bitter tears of Petra Von Kant, the classic 1972 film starring Hannah Schygulla, who has a small role in this contemporary reimagining of the German original.
Asked about how he could justify this homage to Fassbinder’s universe, he said that this wasn’t the first time that he’d approached Fassbinder’s work. In 2000 he had shot Water drops on burning rocks, where they started out from a script by Fassbinder for a film that never get made. Peter Von Kant was a project that he began to develop during the Covid lockdown when he began to think about the future of cinema and the possibilities of shooting a film entirely indoors. He also acknowledged that he wanted to shoot a tribute to the original rather than a remake with a French sensibility instead of the clearly German character of the original.