The rain from this weekend has let up, but the weather here in San Sebastian is still cloudy. Fingers crossed that the sunny day they promised us for Thursday will arrive!
Until then, everyone here is walking the red carpet with an umbrella in one hand, just in case.
At least the carpet isn't covered in plastic anymore, like it was this weekend.
...
Some films just make me feel stupid. I generally am not a fan of this.
20 minutes into This is Love, I still had no real idea what was going on, or even who the main character was supposed to be. I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out… was the director going to pull a “Bruce Willis was dead the whole time!” on me? How did these two characters connect? What in God’s name was going on?
Let me backtrack a moment: This is Love is a German film that begins by intro...
The San Sebastian film festival happens right across the bridge from the "parte vieja" (old part) of the city at the Kursal. When the sun sets over the ocean, you get an amazing cinematic view of the skyline and the bridge.
-Emily Monaco
...
Both Michel Franco and lead actor Darío Yazbek are here in San Sebastian to promote Daniel y Ana, the young Mexican director´s first full-length feature.
The film tells the (true) story of two siblings in an upper class Mexican family that are captured by pornographers and forced to have sex with one another on tape. The director seeks to tell the story of what happens to the relationship between the two after this ordeal and how it comes to shape the way that each one deals wit...
Woody Allen's new film Whatever Works starring Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood was screened here in San Sebastian yesterday. The film played to an enthusiastic press audience: there was laughter and applause at all the right moments, and the daily newspaper review here stated that it harkens back to some of his best work.
The film follows Larry David as an early Allen-esque character--New Yorker, neuroses and all--who meets and befriends a Mississippi ingénue played by Evan Rache...
Today is Saturday, September 18th... the
second day of the San Sebastian-Donostia Film Festival. Here's what's
being screened today...
Official Selection
Chloe
Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried star in a Canadian film that
follows a woman who hires a girl to tempt her husband to see if he is
cheating.
El Baile de la Victoria
In Chile, a young man looking to take revenge on a famous bank heister crosses paths with a mysterious ballerina.
...
Today is Friday, September 18th... the first day of the San Sebastian-Donostia Film Festival. Here's what's being screened today... Official Selection Chloe Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried star in a Canadian film that follows a woman who hires a girl to tempt her husband to see if he is cheating. Zabaltegi Inglourious Basterds Quentin Tarantino's film stars Brad Pitt as the leader of a group of Jewish-American men performing acts of retribution on Nazi's during World War II. Yuki & Nina T...
Oh, how I love film festivals. Or, more precisely, how I love when they invade the town that I call home. My first festival was Toronto: I worked as a volunteer behind the scenes, showing people to their seats. Toronto could never compare to Cannes, the first festival I saw as a journalist, the first time I worked with fest21. Cannes was all glamor and sparkle: we waited for weeks as we learnd which films would be premiering there, who would be coming. We watched as the red carpet was rolled out...
"European Distributors: Up Next!" to improve circulation of European films
EFP and the San Sebastian International Film Festival
continue programme for European Distributors
09/07/2009
After a successful launch of “European Distributors: Up Next!” in 2008, European Film Promotion (EFP) and the San Sebastian International Film Festival continue to support emerging European distributors at this year´s festival between September 18 – 21. The aim of the programme is to im...
Also coming are new films by Woody Allen, Ang Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Bahman Ghobadi, Bong Joon-ho and Johnnie To, among other directors.
North American director Quentin Tarantino will open the Zabaltegi-Pearls section with his latest movie.
Inglourious Basterds. This film, winner of the Best Actor Award for Christoph Waltz at Cannes, will be screened on the first day of the 57th edition on Friday, 18 September.
Zabaltegi-Pearls, the showcase for movies feted at the big int...
Seventeen films to compete for the
Kutxa-New Directors Award
Directors from 13 countries will contend
with their first or second movies
for this award carrying 90,000 euros
8/11/2009
Seventeen films from 13 countries will compete for the Kutxa-New Directors Award at the 57th San Sebastian Festival. Fourteen of these titles compose the Zabaltegi-New Directors section, while the other three, 11’e 10 kala / 10 to 11, La mujer sin piano and Yo también (Me too), will participate in...
Tuesday, day number five of the festival is just about the midpoint, and as in the middle of a long distance race, the pace seems to have abated to cruising speed, conserving energy for the final race to the wire, waiting for Meryl Streep to pull into town, and the closing Concha awards. On Monday actor John Malkovitch appeared at a one-man press conference wearing the coat of many colors he has been sporting around town. John was the sole representative for the Coen Brothers film "Burn ...
The Jury of the VI International Film School Meeting, consisting of students from schools in the United States, Poland, Colombia, Spain, Cuba, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom and Israel, and chaired by director Amos Gitai, has unanimously decided to grant the following awards:
aiTe Award for the film:
"LE BAL DES SUSPENDUS" by Azzam El Mehdi.
ESAV-ÉCOLE SUPÉRIEURE DES ARTS VISUELS. (MOROCCO).
The aiTe Award (Association of Spanish Audiovisual Technical...
A special showing out of competition on Thursday, Day Seven of the fest at the gloriously renovated Teatro Victoria Eugenia was Jonathan Demme's new film "Rachel Getting Married", starring beauteous limpid-eyed dark haired Ann Hathaway in an uncharacteristically less-than-glamorous role as a recovering dope addict, and a host of unknowns supporting her act. Mister Demme, director of such megahits as "Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia" is also president of th...
Turkish female filmmaker Yeşim Ustaoğlu's latest feature "Pandora'nın Kutusu" (Pandora's Box) won the Golden Shell for Best Film at Spain's San Sebastian Film Festival, which wrapped up its 56th edition Saturday.
French actress Tsilla Chelton has also received one of two best actress awards for her role as Nusret in "Pandora's Box,".
Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf's Two-Legged Horse has won the Special Jury Prize of the San Sebastian International Film Festival.
...
Wednesday was Basque Cinema Day and one of the important films which surfaced was a Spanish language film directed by a Basque director and set in the Basque country in and around San Sebastian-Donostia. The name of the picture is "La Casa de mi Padre" (My father´s house) and the subject matter is the tension between families and members of the same family in this part of the world due to ETA terrorism. The picture is beautifully shot in rich color and features some of Spain´s ...
Turkish female filmmaker Yeşim Ustaoğlu's latest feature "Pandora'nın Kutusu" (Pandora's Box) won the Golden Shell for Best Film at Spain's San Sebastian Film Festival, which wrapped up its 56th edition Saturday.
French actress Tsilla Chelton has also received one of two best actress awards for her role as Nusret in "Pandora's Box,".
Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf's Two-Legged Horse has won the Special Jury Prize of the San Sebastian International Film Festival.
...
Jonathan Demme, winner of an Oscar for best director for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and director of films including Something Wild (1986), Philadelphia (1993), The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006) will chair the Official Jury at the coming edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Academy Award-winning director, Jonathan Demme will present his new feature film, Rachel Getting Married, and a “work in progress” version of his latest Neil Young con...
Director Mario Monicelli and Japanese film noir will play the lead in two of the Festival retrospectives. The work of Italian maestro Mario Monicelli and the specific treatment dedicated to film noir by Japanese cinema throughout its history will play the leading part in this year’s edition of San Sebastian Festival, to take place from 18-27 September. CLASSIC RETROSPECTIVE: MARIO MONICELLIComedy was one of the most important genres in the Italian cinema of the 1950s and 60s. Outstanding among...
Close to 200,000 film-goers took part in the various screenings and activities at the 55th edition of the San Sebasti?n International Film Festival, which came to a close on September 29th. Ticket sales were up 8% this year, with a total of 100,576 tickets sold compared with 93,253 in 2006. Added to this figure are the 60,300 entrances by Festival accredited participants and the 18,000 children who enjoyed the morning screenings at the Velodrome, in addition to the peop...
Hong Kong-born director Wayne Wang's "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" won the best film and best actor awards at the 55th annual San Sebastian film festival in Spain on Saturday.Based on a short story by the same name by award-winning author Yiyun Li, the movie depicts the tensions that follow when a widower from Beijing, Mr Shi, goes to the US to visit his recently divorced daughter Yilan."It was a small film that needed a lot of time to be done because I think films need to br...
Wayne Wang, the director of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,explains that what he was really interested in showing in his film was the contrast between the American and Chinese cultures.“Despite the fact that the daughter has become very Americanised, she still respects certain values that she has learnt in China and speaks to her father with respect. In Chinese culture it is difficult to express your feelings; you don’t say things directly, you say them in a very roundabout, formal way.”...
Official selection Eastern Promises by David Cronenberg is the Opening Night Film; Flawless by Michael Radford (Out of Competition) will be San Sebastian Festival Closing Night Film.Battle for Haditha Nick Broomfield Buda az sharm foru rikht / Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (Buda explotó por vergüenza) Hana Makhmalbaf Ceot oi kap gei / Exodus Pang Ho-Cheung Daisy Diamond Simon Staho Earth Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield. Out of CompetitionEmotional Arithmetic Paolo Barzman Encarnación ...
The international jury for the 55th San Sebastian Film Festival is chaired by Paul Auster (Chairman );other jury members includePERNILLA AUGUST NICOLETTA BRASCHI BAHMAN GHOBADI EDUARDO NORIEGA SUSÚ PECORARO PETER WEBBER PAUL AUSTER (Chairman) Paul Auster is the author of Travels in the Scriptorium (2007), The Brooklyn Follies (2006), Oracle Night (2003), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Red Notebook (2002), Timbuktu (1999), Mr. Vertigo (1994), Leviathan (1992), The Music of Chance (1990), Moo...
