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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).
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Eleven moviemakers from Argentina, China, France, Georgia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey and the USA will show their first and second films in San Sebastian Festival’s New Directors section. All of them, together with the remaining few to be announced in the coming weeks, will compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award.
Gülizar / Gulizar, a Turkish-Kosovar co-production about a young victim of sexual assault in the run-up to her wedding, is the feature debut from Turkish moviemaker Belkis Bayrak (Istanbul, 1984), whose previous short films Apartman / The Apartment (2018) and Cemile (2021) have shown at several international competitions.
Roschdy Zem and Bella Kim star in Hiver à Sokcho / Winter in Sokcho, first movie from the French-Japanese director Koya Kamura (Paris, 1983), author of the short film Homesick (2019). This French-Korean co-production tells the tale of a young Korean girl whose life is thrown into disarray when a French artist arrives in the Asian country.
Sivaroj Kongsakul (Bangkok,1980) made his feature directorial debut with Eternity (2010), screened at festivals including Busan, Rotterdam and Hong Kong. In his second work, Regretfully at Dawn, the Thai director entwines the fates of an old man, a little girl and a young soldier.
Brûle le sang / In the Name of Blood, a French-Belgian-Austrian co-production, is the first work from Georgia’s Akaki Popkhadze (Tbilissi, 1991), author of shorts including Je vois (2018) and Ici en silence tout hurle / In Silence Everything Roars (2023). Starring names including Nicolas Duvauchelle, Florent Hill-Chouaki and Denis Lavant, Popkhadze’s debut following the murder of a pillar of the Georgian community is set in Nice.
Having directed Walking in Darkness (2019), premiered in the Bright Future section of the Rotterdam Festival, Chinese moviemaker Yongkang Tang (Taiyuan, 1983) will participate in New Directors with his second film, Stars and the Moon, about a boy from a mountain village who spends every day scouring the sky, convinced that he will see aliens.
Michael Tyburski (New York, 1984), who made his debut at Sundance Festival with The Sound of Silence (2019), will compete in the section with his second film, Turn Me On. Starring Bel Powley and Nick Robinson, this sci-fi romantic comedy is set in a community where people must take a pill every day to eradicate all human emotions.
These films join the others with Spanish production already announced. Screening on the one hand are the debuts La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés, from Antón Álvarez (C. Tangana), opening film of New Directors, and Por donde pasa el silencio / As Silence Passes By, from Sandra Romero, and, on the other, two second features: La llegada del hijo / Surfacing, from Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato (La novia del desierto / The Desert Bride), and Azken erromantikoak (Los últimos románticos), from David Pérez Sañudo (Ane).
All of these films will compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award, coming with 50,000 euros divided equally between the director and distributor of the film in Spain. The Kutxabank-New Directors Award is sponsored by Kutxabank, official collaborator of the Festival. The Kutxabank-New Directors Award Jury has the task of viewing and deciding the winning films. The works corresponding to the New Directors section are also candidates for the DAMA Youth Award, voted by a jury of 150 students between the ages of 18 and 25 years.
New Directors is an example of the San Sebastian Festival’s commitment to new talents; however, said commitment also extends to the screening of first and second works in all other sections, including the Official Selection, as well as the showing of first works in Nest, the competitive section for shorts by students from film schools all over the world.
Debut movie from Antón Álvarez, better known as C. Tangana in his musical facet. This movie, starring Yerai Cortés, revolves around a family secret that needs to be told.
Irune, a woman who keeps to herself, lacks self confidence and has hypochondriac tendencies, works in a paper mill on the edge of an industrial town. Her life is limited to a few acquaintances: her work colleagues, a neighbour with whom she shares something of a friendship and a railway company employee she consults on the times of trains she never takes. Her fragile balance will fall to pieces when she feels a lump in her breast, coinciding with a work conflict in which she is personally involved. Suddenly her life takes an expected turn, offering her the chance, perhaps without knowing it, she had always been waiting for.
In the working-class neighborhoods of Nice, France, a pillar of the local Georgian community is murdered. His son Tristan, who aspires to become an orthodox priest, finds himself alone with his grieving mother. Gabriel, his older brother with a troubled past, reappears from a long exile to make amends by redeeming his family honor.
After Gülizar is sexually assaulted, her future husband Emre does not report the incident, but later decides to go after the attacker himself. Gülizar's wedding preparations slowly turn into a claustrophobic, silent journey as she fears that her attacker will be exposed. Her flame of silence burns not only herself, but also the love she feels for Emre.
In Sokcho, a small seaside village in South Korea, Soo-Ha, 25, lives in a bit of a rut, rhythmed by visits to her mother, a fishmonger, and her relationship with her boyfriend, Jun-Ho. When a French man named Yan Kerrand arrives in the boarding house where Soo-Ha works, it awakens within her questions about her own identity, and that of her French father, of whom she knows almost nothing. As winter settles over the town, Soo-Ha and Kerrand will observe and gauge each other, trying to communicate.
Sofía, deep in secret mourning, must take her son into her home on his return from spending years in jail. For both of them this reunion will be the chance to overcome the unsurmountable distance separating them since the moment of the crime.
Antonio has to return to Ecija, a city in the interior of Andalusia, after a long time. It is Easter. There he is reunited with his family and his twin brother Javier who has a physical disability and needs his help. Antonio will have to deal with this situation and face a difficult decision: stay and help his family or return to the life he has built outside.
In a small province not far from Bangkok, Yong's life seems casual and typical of an old man, but he bears the mark of a Thai ex-veteran, as evidenced by the scar from the amputation of his right index finger. Yong spends every day dreaming of building a tree house with his own hands and raising an intelligent niece abandoned by her parents. He has a black Thai dog named Rambo. He has strange eyes that can see the secrets of the afterlife.
In the closed mountain village, the pupil Xingxing imagines that there would be aliens in the sky, and he tries every means to see them. The villagers all think this is ridiculous. Only the 'one-track-minded' brother Yueliang helps him fulfill his final wish.
In a community where the inconvenience of human emotion has been eradicated by a single daily vitamin, one young couple skips their dose and discovers love, joy, sex and all the baggage that comes with it.
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