Juliette Binoche, one of Europe’s most international actresses, will feature on the official poster of San Sebastian Festival’s 70th edition, to run from 16-24 September. Winner of an Academy Award for her work in The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996), the French actor will visit the city for the fourth time to receive one of this year’s Donostia Awards in recognition of an extensive career which has seen her play almost 75 characters, from power-wielding heroines to fragile beings with historical figures, drama roles and comedy parts along the way.

The award ceremony will take place at the Kursaal Auditorium and will be accompanied by the Donostia Award Screening of Avec amour et acharnement / Both Sides of the Blade (2022), the movie for which Claire Denis landed the Silver Bear for Best Director at the last Berlin Festival with a cast featuring Vincent Lindon, Grégoire Colin and Binoche herself. 

The company from San Sebastian, Dimensión, commissioned to create this year’s posters, has taken a portrait of Juliette Binoche by photographer Brigitte Lacombe to create the official 70th edition poster focused on the actor’s name. Born in France and now living in New York, Lacombe has created iconic and intimate portraits of celebrated artists, having also documented the film sets of moviemakers including Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Federico Fellini, Michael Haneke, Lynne Ramsay, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg.

Zinemira, the section dedicated to Basque cinema, will for the first time have its own poster as part of a collection of images designed as a “homage to outlook” and “to all ways of looking at life and the cinema”. In the words of Guille Viglione, the head of Dimensión, “cinema is a way of looking: the director builds a reality filtered by their outlook, the spectator broadens their vision of the world and the cast look at the camera to transmit the essence of their character”.  

“In these disconcerting times, the more we want to see, the less time we have to look. So taking the time to look at something is to appreciate it. Observing, soaking up the details, taking it apart with your eyes is not only a question of sight, but also of feeling”, say Dimensión, an independent company which “since 1988 has believed in combining strategy, creativity and technology to prompt improvements in society and generate business” for its clients.