San Sebastian Festival Unveils Spanish Titles

The San Sebastian Film Festival, the biggest film event in the Spanish-speaking world, has unveiled a packed lineup of Spanish titles that is strong on women auteurs, led by Iciar Bollaín, Pilar Palomero, Paula Ortiz and Alauda Ruiz de Azua, who are now stepping up in scale or industry backing as big SVOD players – Movistar Plus+, Prime Video – move into the production of Spanish movies aimed at theatrical release or back their original series. 

Vying in main competition, Bollaín’s “I Am Nevenka” looks like the first film to see the light of day from six auteur event movies co-produced by Movistar Plus+ and directed by leading cinematographic talent such as Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Alberto Fernández. 

Also selected are two leading lights of a younger generation of women directors which have galvanised Spanish arthouse but are now looking for broader audiences. 

Goya and San Sebastian winner Pilar Palomero (“Schoolgirls,” “La Maternal”) competes in main competition with “Glimmers,” (“Destellos”), a relationship drama backed by not only Misent Producciones and Inicia Films, Palomero’s regular producer, as well as Mod Producciones, behind some of Spain’s biggest recent productions such as Alejandro Amenábar’s “While at War” and “The Captive.”

A Special Screening, “The Red Virgin” (aka “Hildegart”) is directed by Paula Ortiz, who helmed “Across the River and Into the Trees” with Josh Husherton and Liev Shreiber, who returns to Spanish filmmaking with a real events inspired drama which will debut in theaters across Spain on Sept. 27 as the first Prime Video original to get a wide theatrical release in the country. 

Having broken out with her feature debut “Lullaby,” a Spanish Academy Award and Málaga winner described by Pedro Almodóvar as “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years,” Alauda Ruiz de Azúa directs the highest-profile series at San Sebastián, “Querer.”

Set in the current day and laced by genre drive as both courtroom drama and psychological thriller, “Querer” begins when Miren, after more than 30 years of marriage and two sons, abandons the family home and goes to a police station with her lawyer to denounce her husband for decades of sexual abuse.

Spanish titles’ competition presence is currently rounded up by  “Tardes de Soledad” “The Wailing” (“El Llanto”, toplining Ester Expósito, one of the stars of Netflix global hit “Elite,” and co-written by Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s regular co-scribe Isabel Peña (“The Beasts”).         

Among Spanish titles, further highlights look set to include “Los últimos románticos” from David Pérez Sañudo (“Ane is Missing”).   

The 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival runs Sept. 20-28.  

Spanish Titles, 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival

Main Competition

“Afternoons of Solitude,” (Albert Serra)

Reportedly exploring the spiritual pain of bullfighting and its aesthetics, the creation of ephemeral beauty in a brutal clash between man and bull, seen from the POV of the matador.

“I Am Nevenka,” (Iciar Bollaín)

Written by Bollaín and Isa Campo (“Between Two Waters”), co-scribes on Bollain’s 2021’s breakout “Maixabel,” a film inspired by a landmark sexual harassment case in Spain, taking place way back in 2001, weaving a narrative of power, gender discrimination, and the courage to stand alone. Sold by Film Factory.

“Glimmers,” (“Destellos,” Pilar Palomero)

A top-notch Spanish cast led by Patricia López Arnaíz and Antonio de la Torre drive the tale of a woman asked by her daughter to care for her father, the hospitalized ex-husband she has not seen for 15 years. Buried resentments well as she meets him again. After two multi-prized studies of female adolescence, Palomero’s biggest movie to date and a “reflection on the marks left on us and which we leave, which make us who we are,” Palomero has said.

“The Wailing,” (“El llanto,” Pedro Martín Calero)

“No one can see it with the naked eye, but its presence has always been there. 20 years ago he stalked Camila and Marie. Now, 10,000 kilometers away, Andrea has begun to hear the wailing,” the synopsis runs. Lead produced by on-the-rise Madrid production house Caballo Films (“The Beasts,” “La ruta”), and the feature debut of Martín Calero, whose work to date includes Weeknd pop video “Secrets,” commercials – the vertigo-inducing Honda Civic –Up spot, for instance – or fiction vignettes, such as “Julius Cesar.”

Out of Competition

“Querer,” (Alauda Ruiz de Azua)

In her TV debut Ruíz de Azua returns to an eye-opening intimate family drama set in her lush native Basque Country, a story which delivers once more some uncomfortable truths about women’s role in traditional family structures. One of the banner fall series from Movistar Plus+, combining the force of another emerging female voice and the industrial power of the Telefonica pay-TV/SVOD player. 

Special Screenings

“La virgen roja,” (aka “Hildegart,” Paula Ortiz)

A big Spanish period production “Hildegart,” starring Najwa Nimri (“Money Heist,” “Locked Up”) and Alba Planas (“Skam España”), the fact-based tale of the extraordinary and tragic life of Spain’s Hildegart Rodríguez, born in 1914, a child prodigy raised by her mother to be a model for future women, who gave conferences on feminism and sexuality from the age of 11. Producers Avalon and Elastica Films, behind 2022 Berlin Golden Bear winner “Alcarràs,” produce for Prime Video Spain. 

New Directors 

“La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortes,”

A portrait of young flamenco guitarist Cortés, at the cutting edge of current flamenco innovation.

“Los últimos románticos,” (David Pérez Sañudo)

Produced by Basque label Irusoin and Seville-based La Claqueta, the genre-blending tale – typical of Pérez Sañudo – of a withdrawn hypochondriac who finds a new sense of identity and source of public respect during a labor dispute which breaks out at her local paper mill in a blue-collar town near the Basque city of Bilbao. Latido Films sells. 

“Por donde pasa el silencio,” (Sandra Romero)

With “The Wailing,” one of the awaited Spanish feature debuts of the year, a feature-length reimagining of Romero’s short of the same title which won a best director plaudit in Malaga, the story of a man who returns to his rural town, having forged a life in Madrid, to help his twin brother. 

Velodromo

“Celeste,” (Diego San José)

Carmen Machi, once buttoned-holed as a comedian but now recognized as one of Spain’s most versatile of performers, plays a tax insdector who, after years of humdrum work, has the chance to catch a high-profile tax invader, going out in glory.

More to come….