Starting with this year’s 69th San Sebastián Festival, the festival will be gender-neutral in its acting awards. The Silver Shell for best actor and best actress will be replaced by the Silver Shell for best leading performance and for best supporting performance.
“The change arises from the conviction that gender, a social and political construct, is no longer a criterion that we follow to distinguish between performances. The criterion for the Jury will be to distinguish between good and bad performances, so that we will be joining our friends at the Berlin Festival on the path that they have already started out on. These are times of change and making decisions. We are closely following the current debates within the feminist movement on this and other issues. We have no certainties but we do have the will to continue evolving and helping to build a fairer and more equal society”, the director of the Festival, José Luis Rebordinos, explains. This change in the regulations makes it possible to make room for other identities that do not match male or female genders and also recognizes the work in so-called supporting performances, which do not usually receive awards at film festivals. These awards may be presented ex-aequo.
The festival unveiled the official poster for the 69th edition which will be held from September 17th to 25th featuring a black and white photograph of Actress Sigourney Weaver, adorned with coloristic brushstrokes that refer to the posters from the other sections, which have also been designed by Eva Villar Estudio.
In 2018, the Festival launched a new graphic line of posters combining photography and illustration and featuring significant figures from international cinema. After the posters featuring Isabelle Huppert, Penélope Cruz and Willem Dafoe, in 2021 it will be Sigourney Weaver who lends her face to the 69th Festival in a design by Eva Villar from San Sebastián created from a photograph by Matthew Brookes.
Weaver’s first visit to San Sebastián coincided with her debut in cinema in Alien (1979), the film that launched her to fame thanks to the unforgettable character of Lieutenant Ripley. Since then, the actress has visited the city on two further occasions to present, once again in the Official Selection for A Map of The World (1999) and A Monster Calls (2016). On this last occasion, Sigourney Weaver received the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award.
“The Festival is pleased and honored to announce that the image for its 69th edition will be Sigourney Weaver’s, an exceptional actress much loved by the public who has shone in the entire range of genres with characters that form part of the universal imaginary of cinema”, director of the Festival, José Luis Rebordinos says.