SanSebastian

John Sayles, Naomi Kawase, Bent Hamer, Raúl Ruiz and Peter Mullan in the Official Selection

Directors Naomi Kawase, Bent Hamer, Peter Mullan and Victoria Galardi will compete for the first time at San Sebastian Festival alongside John Sayles, Raúl Ruiz and Daoud Aoulad-Syad, all repeat contenders for the Golden Shell.

The Japanese moviemaker Naomi Kawase will present Genpin. Kawase won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes with Moe no Suzako (1997) and was the first woman to win the Special Jury Prize in Cannes in 2007 for Mogari no More (The Mourning Forest).

The British director, screenwriter and actor Peter Mullan will compete at San Sebastian with Neds, his third film as a director.Orphans, his first movie as a director, won awards at Festivals like Venice, Paris or Gijón.  His previous film, The Magdalene Sisters, landed the Golden Lion at Venice Festival in 2002.  

For his part, the veteran and renowned filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, will return to San Sebastian with Mistérios de Lisboa (Mysteries of Lisbon). Raúl Ruiz has participated at the most important and prestigious international film festivals: at San Sebastian in 1994 with Fado majeur et mineur, at Cannes four times and received the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for an outstanding artistic contribution in 1997.

The Norwegian Bent Hamer, whose movie Eggs was screened as part of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 1995,  will also compete. Following the international success of Salmer Fra Kjøkkset / Kitchen Stories, winner of the Golden Spike at the Seminci in 2003, he participated at Un Certain Regard in Cannes in 2007. Bent Hamer presented Factotum at Zabaltegi Specials in 2006 and was one of the directors included at the 2007 retrospective “Cold Fever”. Hamer will compete at San Sebastian with Home for Christmas.  

John Sayles, to whom San Sebastian dedicated a retrospective in 1994, will revisit the Festival with Amigo. This is the fourth time John Sayles will have participated at San Sebastian, following Men of War, Silver City and Honeydripper, winner of the Best Screenplay Jury Award in 2007 (tied with Siete mesas de billar francés).

The Moroccan director Daoud Aoulad-Syad, who formerly presented his movie Tarfaya at San Sebastian in 2004, will compete with his fifth film A Jamaâ (The Mosque), produced by the filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako, who has directed Waiting for Happiness (2002), selected for Un Certain Regard  at Cannes, where he won the Fipresci Award and Bamako (2006), which was screened at Zabaltegi-Pearls.

Representing Argentina, we will have Victoria Galardi and her second movie, Cerro Bayo (Mount Bayo), also a contender for the Kutxa-New Directors Award. Amorosa Soledad (Lovely Loneliness), codirected with Martín Carranza, was among the films screened as part of Films in Progress 13 and competed in Zabaltegi-New Directors 2008, where it garnered the Youth Award.

The Festival will shortly unveil the titles to complete the Official Selection.