For its 52nd edition, Spain’s highest profile movie industry event is once again playing host to the latest in international filmmaking this year. The festival jury is set on viewing some 20 films, one of which will take out the top prize, the Golden Shell.
Claude Chabrol, Francois Dupeyron, Eric Caravaca, Robert Guédiguian, Ariane Ascaride, Lucile Hadzilalivocic, Helene de Fougerolles, Maria de Medeiros, Naky Sky Savane, Seubene Ousmane and Patricio Guzman will accompany the 18 French productions and co-productions screened at the festival.
“Inguelezi” by François Dupeyron, released in France in April 2004, is presented in the Official Competition (and will be distributed in Spain by Alta Films), along with “Mon père est ingénieur,” the new film by Robert Guédiguian (distributed by Golem Distribucion), “El Cielito,” a Franco-Argentinean production directed by Maria Victoria Menis with funding from the Fonds Sud Cinéma commission, and “Tarfaya” by Daoud Aoula-Syrad.
As a sidebar to the Official Competition, a selection of titles acclaimed at other film festivals but not previously seen in Spain will be screened at the Zabaltegi theater.
Two debut films feature in the New Directors Section: “Innocence” by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (director of the short film, “La Bouche de Jean-Pierre”) and “La Nuit de la vérité” by the Burkina Faso director Fanta Regina Nacro.
The festival boasts some big names in the Pearls of the Festival Section. After their appearance at the Venice Film Festival, Mike Leigh will be presenting “Vera Drake” and Claude Chabrol, “La Demoiselle d’honneur,” two films that will not be released in France until the end of the year. And following on from their presentation at Cannes, festivalgoers will see “Comme une image” (“Like an Image”) by Agnès Jaoui (Best Screenplay award at Cannes) and “Notre musique” (“Our Music”) by Jean-Luc Godard. And, recently presented at Toronto, the documentaries “Salvador Allende” by Patricio Guzman and “Darwin’s Nightmare” by Huber Sauper (a French/Austrian/Belgian co-production) will also be screened at San Sebastián. Also in this section is “Moolaade” (a Senegalese/Burkina Faso/Moroccan/Tunisian/Cameroon/French co-production) by the 81-year-old Senegalese director, Sembene Ousmane, which is the second episode in his triptych entitled “Héroïsme au quotidien.”
Documentaries are well represented at the festival, with the Velodrome Section offering Spanish audiences the chance to see “Genesis,” the latest documentary by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou (“Microcosmos”), which is slated for release in France in October. Two documentaries are also presented in the Horizontes Section: “Je t’aime … moi non plus” by Maria de Medeiros and “Pinochet et ses trois généraux” by the Spanish filmmaker José Maria Berzosa (a Chilean/French co-production).
The new film by Argentinean director Edgardo Cozarinsky, “Ronda Nocturna” (a French/Argentinean co-production), will be presented in the Films in Progress Section, in a world preview screening.
