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 Argentine actor Leonardo Sbaraglia returns for the second year running to compete in the Official Section of the San Sebastian Festival with The man who loved flying saucers, a film directed by another wellknown visitor to the Festival, Diego Lerman, the director of The Substitute and A Kind of Family. On this occasion, in a mixture of comedy, drama and mysticism, they depict the trip that the journalist José de Zer and his cameraman actually made in 1986 to the region of Córdoba to follow the trail of an alleged sighting of aliens when they managed to turn the paltry evidence into a media phenomenon. Lehman explained that the film was about someone who was losing his mind, “It’s a struggle between fiction and reality”, while Sbaraglia revealed that he had tried not to lapse into parody when playing the role of De Zer. They both said that the last thing they wanted to do at a press conference for a film was to talk about politics, but the situation with Milei’s government meant they had the feeling that this was the last film we were ever going to make.