San Sebastian Kicks Into Gear As Spain Enjoys Business Growth – Deadline

With the Berlin Movie Competition’s Golden Bear awarded to Spanish director Carla Simón and 4 of the nation’s titles that includes in competitors at Cannes, there’s a quiet air of confidence amongst Spanish business professionals, together with José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastian Movie Competition.

“This has been the perfect 12 months for Spanish cinema,” Rebordinos tells Deadline shortly after revealing the line-up for San Sebastian’s newest version, operating from September 16-24.

This 12 months the outstanding Spanish pageant, celebrating its seventieth version, kicks into gear with some 200 movies throughout its six aggressive and 7 non-competitive sections. The choice might be bookended by Friday evening’s opening movie Jail 77 (Modelo 77), from Spanish filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez, and Neil Jordan’s newest movie Marlowe, starring Diane Kruger and Liam Neeson, which is able to shut the pageant. The total lineup contains the European Premiere of Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio’s The Marvel, starring Florence Pugh, and South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s newest providing, Prime/Stroll Up. The pageant can also be understood to be continuing with its inclusion of Sparta, Ulrich Seidl’s controversial drama which was pulled final week by the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition following allegations of impropriety.

This 12 months, San Sebastian returns to 100% capability in cinemas this 12 months, with a stacked program of events, occasions, and seminars with the participation of worldwide company and delegates. Whereas the pageant nonetheless held bodily screenings throughout the pandemic, seating and screening numbers had been restricted, and there have been only a few company from abroad.

“The principle problem has been attempting to place collectively all of the financing,” Rebordinos tells Deadline of this 12 months’s preparations. “Within the final two years, a few of our sponsors didn’t signal with us as a result of they had been connected to particular bodily occasions. So if there’s no occasion, there’s no sponsor. However this 12 months we’ve managed to get again most of our sponsors, and we even raised just a little bit extra money than we had in earlier years.”

As a public-facing pageant, Rebordinos and his staff have the added problem of luring audiences again to theaters, with a big portion of the pageant’s earnings comprised of field workplace stubs. The pageant has lengthy been the leaping off level for a lot of movies that go on to play in theatres in Spain, with the November – December window usually being a very good time for admissions into Spanish theatres. This 12 months, says Rebordinos, “the state of affairs could be very weird,” pointing to uncertainty for the longer term well being of the cinema enterprise.

Elsewhere, San Sebastian is about handy out 4 honorary Donostia Awards as a part of the anniversary celebrations. Two recipients are nonetheless to be introduced, however Juliette Binoche will go by the pageant’s Kursaal Auditorium on September 18, the place she’ll decide up the profession achievement prize earlier than introducing her Berlinale winner, Each Sides of The Blade. David Cronenberg will comply with on September 21, and he’ll current his controversial 2022 Palme d’Or contender, Crimes of the Future. Different buzzy fall titles like Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Fear Darling and Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Disappointment will display as a part of Perlak, San Sebastian’s sidebar part devoted to titles which have screened at different festivals.

“It’s okay for us to have some movies from different festivals in our lineup — it’s not an issue,” Rebordinos says of the favored sidebar. “There are a number of festivals and we compete between ourselves. However we’re fortunate as a result of we’re not one of many huge three. We are able to do issues in another way. For us, it’s vital to be a really sturdy pageant with European and Latin American movies. We all the time look to the Latin American business. And with Latin American movies we are able to compete with different festivals. With North American movies it’s not possible.”

San Sebastian has lengthy established itself as the important thing assembly level between Europe and Latin America, with sections in each its business and pageant packages devoted to the area. This 12 months the pageant has three Latin American movies within the Official Choice. There may be additionally a robust native presence with 4 Spanish productions in competitors, two of that are Basque co-productions, the primary time this has occurred within the pageant’s historical past.

“We now have 4 movies in the primary competitors, however we might have had six with no drawback,” Rebordinos says. “One of many surprises of the pageant will for certain be Suro, the movie by Mikel Gurrea. It’s a first-time movie and a Basque movie in the primary choice. I’m certain individuals will converse rather a lot about this director after the pageant.”

On the business facet, San Sebastian will launch its new Artistic Buyers’ Convention, co-organized with CAA Media Finance. The convention will see producers from 10 Spanish productions or co-productions pitch their initiatives to a roundtable of prime business executives, together with MUBI’s Bobby Allen, Piers Wenger of A24, Netflix’s Teresa Moneo, and Focus Options’s Kiska Higgs. Roeg Sutherland, Benjamin Kramer, and Sarah Schweitzman of CAA Media Finance will average. The convention will run from September 19 – 20.

Nevertheless, the pageant’s anniversary celebrations will proceed into the brand new 12 months, with Zinemaldia 70, a large-scale restoration undertaking, scheduled to be unveiled within the coming months. The pageant launched the undertaking in 2018 alongside researchers from the native movie college Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, who’ve set about cataloging and digitalizing hundreds of pictures, posters, press supplies, magazines, and books from all through the pageant’s historical past.

“Nobody has correctly dealt with these things for 66 years,” Rebordinos says. “It’s very costly to work with archive materials, however we are able to do it as a result of we’ve very huge sponsorship from the Spanish lottery.”

The historic supplies may also obtain a brand new bodily house on the Tabakalera, the imposing up to date arts heart and official base of the pageant since its refurbishment in 2015. Researchers will be capable of sift by the paperwork and discover the little-known components of the pageant’s historical past, together with the darkish interval of censorship below Franco and the gradual transfer to democratization following his loss of life.

“We predict it is going to be the most important archive of movie in Spain,” Rebordinos says.