SanSebastian

J.A. Bayona will present “A Monster Calls”, out of competition, and the latest works by Diego Galán and Jo Sol will enjoy special screenings in the framework of the Official Selection

Nine titles with Spanish production will form part of the New Directors, Horizontes Latinos, Pearls, Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, International Film Students Meeting and Velodrome selections

Today the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas hosted the presentation of fifteen Spanish-produced films to be screened at the 64th edition of the San Sebastian Festival from 16-24 September. José Luis Rebordinos, Director of the Festival, and Ruth Pérez de Anucita, Head of Communications, announced the titles to be presented in the Official Selection, New Directors, Horizontes Latinos, Pearls, Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, the International Film Students Meeting and the Velodrome.

The story of best known former Spanish Government mole, the search for a serial killer, the passing of time in love. Some of the most noteworthy Spanish moviemakers will compete for the Golden Shell with their latest works. Alberto Rodríguez (Seville) brings El hombre de las mil caras (Smoke and Mirrors), based on the adventures of Francisco Paesa. The director of Stockholm, Rodrigo Sorogoyen (Madrid), helms a detective thriller in Que Dios nos perdone (May God Save Us), and Jonás Trueba (Madrid) analyses in La reconquista (The Reconquest) the relationship between a couple fifteen years after their first meeting.

Sorogoyen and Trueba debut in the Official Selection, while Rodríguez repeats the experience for the third time. The relationship between the filmmaker from Seville and the Festival began in the New Directors section, where he landed a special mention for his first film, El factor Pilgrim (The Pilgrim Factor, 2000). In 2005 he competed with 7 vírgenes (7 Virgins) and carried off the Silver Shell for Best Actor (Juan José Ballesta), the same acknowledgement as won by Javier Gutiérrez for his part in La isla mínima (Marshland, 2014), which also received the Best Cinematography Award.

J.A. Bayona (Barcelona) will participate out of competition with A Monster Calls, his third feature film after his hugely successful El orfanato (The Orphanage) and The Impossible, which also had its European premiere at San Sebastian in 2012. The star of the movie, Sigourney Weaver, will receive a Donostia Award at the 64th edition.

The Official Selection special screenings will include the latest works by the filmmaker, critic and former Festival director, Diego Galán (Tangiers), and by the screenwriter and moviemaker Jo Sol (Barcelona). Galán will present Manda huevos, a look at how men are viewed in Spanish films, flipside of the documentary Con la pata quebrada (Barefoot and in the Kitchen), screened at Cannes Classics and in the Festival’s Made in Spain section, looking at the perception of women. For his part, the director from Catalonia will premiere Vivir y otras ficciones, sharing the cast headliner with El taxista ful, distinguished with a special mention by the Altadis-New Directors Award Jury in 2005.

In the new talents section, debutant Nely Reguera (Barcelona) signs María (y los demás), in which Bárbara Lennie embodies a young 35 year old who must find another place in the world when her widowed father starts a new life.

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, in its first competitive edition, brings Sipo Phantasma (Ghost Ship), first feature film by the Basque moviemaker Koldo Almandoz (San Sebastian), a tale of boats, shipwrecks, ghosts, vampires, love and cinema, and the short films Caminan, by Mikel Rueda, and Gure hormek (Our Walls) by María Elorza and Maider Fernández Iriarte (who jointly go by the name of ‘Las chicas de Pasaik’).

Horizontes Latinos features the winner of last year’s Films in Progress in San Sebastian, the Brazilian, French and Spanish co-production Era O Hotel Cambridge (The Cambridge Squatter), helmed by Eliane Caffé (Sao Paulo), about a group of refugees and homeless immigrants who squat an abandoned building in Sao Paulo.  The Spanish participation in Pearls links up to Neruda, the unreal yet precise biography by Pablo Larraín, a co-production with Chile, France and Argentina presented at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

For the International Film Students Meeting, two Spanish shorts films have been selected: Take Away, directed by Jorge Cantos (Geórg Cantos), a student at the ECAM (Madrid Film School). Cantos, author of the documentary short Dôtenh chosen among the best short films of 2015 by ‘Caimán Cuadernos de Cine’, turns in this work to fiction to portray “the lost fast-food generation”. For its part, Celebració, made by Pompeu Fabra University Faculty of Communications students Pau Cruanyes and Gerard Vidal, tells the tale of a confused bride, taking its inspiration from the short story by Federico Falco, “El tío vidente”.

Lastly, the Velodrome will host Kalebegiak, the most important audiovisual undertaking of the San Sebastian, European Capital of Culture 2016 Foundation. This collective project consisting of twelve stories filmed in or taking their inspiration from San Sebastian includes the participation of filmmakers Koldo Almandoz, Asier Altuna, Luiso Berdejo, Daniel Calparsoro, Iñaki Camacho, Las chicas de Pasaik, Borja Cobeaga, Telmo Esnal, Isabel Herguera, Ekain Irigoyen, Julio Medem, Izibene Oñederra, Gracias Querejeta and Imanol Uribe, accompanied by technical and artistic teams on which hallowed names and newcomers coincide.