Borja Cobeaga, Diego San José and Borja Echevarría are responsible for writing and directing the ceremony

The opening gala will be broadcast live by La 2, ETB1, eitb.eus, and the Festival website.Actresses Nagore Aranburu and Belén Cuesta will take the gala through its steps at the opening of the San Sebastian Festival, tomorrow, Friday 21, at 21:00 in the Kursaal Auditorium.

The gala has been written and directed by Borja Cobeaga, Diego San José and Borja Echevarría (Fe de Etarras (Bomb Scared), Ocho apellidos vascos (Spanish Affair). The screenwriters use humour to portray the peculiarities of film festivals, particularly the San Sebastian festival and the city’s typical description as an “incomparable setting”.

“These are bad times for humour. You get the impression that we all feel as if we’re under attack when someone ridicules or laughs at our convictions. Humour has always been an essential part of artistic expression and serves as a catalyst, making us question ourselves and the topics which reappear time and again. In this case, we want to laugh at the clichés generally used when referring to our city and our festival,” explained José Luis Rebordinos, the Festival Director.

Cobeaga defines the Festival commission as “innovative, challenging and bold.” “The way the galas were organised was firmly established; it was a blank slate and no humour had been made in this respect,” he explained. “We were asked just to be ourselves,” he notes.

The result is a ceremony where the Festival laughs at itself. “If anyone is teased and laughed at, it’s the Festival itself,” he says. The director of Fe de etarras (Spanish Affair) hopes that no-one will lose their jobs on Friday night and trusts that “the new feature will win the day and be here to stay.”

The ceremony will open with a humorous monologue and will be sprinkled with comical videos. Furthermore, throughout the gala, the Festival guests will announce the contents of the sections and activities; the Fipresci Grand Prix will be presented; the 20th anniversary of the programme Versión Española will be celebrated; the Official Jury will come out onto the stage and its president, the filmmaker Alexander Payne, will make a short speech; and, finally, the crew of the opening film, El amor menos pensado (An Unexpected Love), consisting of the director, Juan Vera, and its two leading characters, Ricardo Darín and Mercedes Morán, will introduce the movie.