Films by Paul B. Preciado, Delphine Girard, Jean-Luc Godard, Yui Kiyohara, Damien Manivel, Rodrigo Moreno, Éléonore Saintagnan and Eduardo Williams will compete at San Sebastian Festival’s 71st edition in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera open competition, where everything goes as far as style and runtime are concerned. The section will showcase 25 titles: fifteen features, eight shorts and two medium-length films.
Zabaltegi-Tabakalera will open with Remembering Every Night (Subete no Yoru wo Omoidasu), directed by filmmaker Yui Kiyohara. This year she shows her second full-length film, a study of various female characters. The opening event will also include the showing of Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars’ (Film annonce du film qui n’existera jamais: ‘Drôles de Guerres’) a posthumous short film by Jean-Luc Godard that premiered at Cannes Film Festival
Closing the section is the documentary-maker Ulises de la Orden who will show The Trial (El juicio), a non-fiction that premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlinale bringing a detailed document of the trial against the military juntas of the Argentinian dictatorship in 1985.
All films in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section compete for the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award, decided by a dedicated jury. The award comes with 20,000 euros for the director (6,000 euros) and distributor of the film in Spain (14,000 euros).
2023 San Sebastian Festival Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Films
FILM ANNONCE DU FILM QUI N’EXISTERA JAMAIS: «DRÔLES DE GUERRES» / TRAILER OF THE FILM THAT WILL NEVER EXIST: «PHONY WARS»
JEAN-LUC GODARD (FRANCE)
Country(ies) of production: France – Switzerland
OPENING NIGHT FILM
Rejecting the billions of alphabetic diktats to liberate the incessant metamorphoses and metaphors of a necessary and true language by re-turning to the locations of past film shoots, while keeping track of modern times.
SUBETE NO YORU WO OMOIDASU / REMEMBERING EVERY NIGHT
YUI KIYOHARA (JAPAN)
Country(ies) of production: Japan
Cast: Kumi Hyodo, Minami Ohba, Ai Mikami, Guama Uchida, Tadashi Okujno, Shintaro Yuya, Mizuho Nojima
OPENING NIGHT FILM
A story of three women, weaved in the Tama New Town suburbs of Tokyo, opened in 1971 as the country’s largest-ever residential housing project. One person’s precious memory resonates through one day in the life of another.
EL JUICIO / THE TRIAL
ULISES DE LA ORDEN (ARGENTINA)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina – Norway – France – Italy
CLOSING NIGHT FILM
1985, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The trial of the Military Juntas of the last dictatorship (1976/83), accused of crimes against humanity. As in Nuremberg after World War II, the trial is entirely recorded in U-matic tapes. For 90 days, the testimonies of the horror were heard and a final sentence: “Never Again”. The defenders and the political and ideological positions of those who supported the dictatorship. In the voice of the victims, the stories of torture and pain. Life and death in the same room. An archive of the past and a film that raises a starting point.
ANTIER NOCHE / NIGHTS GONE BY
ALBERTO MARTÍN MENACHO (SPAIN)
Country(ies) of production: Switzerland – Spain
Cast: Juan Francisco Cambero Domínguez, Pepa Gracia, Antonio Acosta Narciso, Alba Domingo Martínez
Ikusmira Berriak 2019
Juan Francisco is twelve years old and lives in a village in southern Spain, surrounded by ancient oak trees and solar panels. Through hunting with greyhounds, he discovers the close relationship between humans and animals. Santi and Antonio are part of a youthful modernity that coexists with the oldest of traditions. Pepa is a young mother who works as a seasonal worker. The choral portrait of this youth reveals a land of hares and donkeys, love stories, fires and rave parties.
AUNQUE ES DE NOCHE / EVEN THOUGH IT’S NIGHT
GUILLERMO GARCÍA LÓPEZ (SPAIN)
Country(ies) of production: Spain – France
In La Cañada, Europe’s biggest unregulated settlement, there has been no electricity for over a year. In the firelight, Toni, a 13-year-old boy, discovers that his best friend Nasser is leaving forever. Amongst legends of a possible future, Toni captures the last moments with his friend and looks for a way to stay connected to him.
BÉN TRONG VO KEN VANG / INSIDE THE YELLOW COCOON SHELL
AN PHAM THIEN (VIETNAM)
Country(ies) of production: Singapore – Vietnam – France – Spain
Cast: Le Phong Vu, Nguyen Thi Truc Quynh, Nguyen Thinh, Vu Ngoc Manh
A reluctant Thien must take the body of his sister-in-law, who died in a freak motorcycle accident in Saigon, and her five-year-old son Dao, who miraculously survived the crash, to their hometown in the countryside. Thien begins a search for his older brother who vanished years ago to hand Dao over to him. On the road, Thien has a series of sublime dreams and enthralling encounters that reignite suppressed memories and forbidden desires. Deep in the labyrinth of these phantom pursuits, Thien battles with his own existential crisis of what is worth living for.
BLAZH / GRACE
ILYA POVOLOTSKY (RUSSIA)
Country(ies) of production: Russia
Cast: Maria Lukyanova, Gela Chitava
An old camper van passes through an obscure Russian province, carrying a teen girl, her father and a rusty film projector. They’ve been on the road for a long time, drifting among the eerie picturesque “nowhere’s”. She’s used to his melancholy and random women. He puts up with her whims. But everything changes on the way up North, when their world packed into the tight space of the car along with hopes, hurts, fears, and unburied past – eventually explodes.
CAMPING DU LAC
ÉLÉONORE SAINTAGNAN (FRANCE)
Country(ies) of production: Belgium – France
Cast: Éléonore Saintagnan, Anna Turluc’h, Jean-Benoît Ugeux, Rosemary Standley, Wayne Standley, Étienne Siberil
Éléonore drives west. Her car breaks down in the middle of Brittany, France. There she rents a bungalow in a campsite with a view of the lake, in which, it is said, lives a legendary beast. From mobile home to mobile home, she observes the present, summons the past and lets herself be invaded by fiction.
CONTADORES
Short film
IRATI GOROSTIDI (SPAIN)
Country(ies) of production: Spain
Cast: Santiago Fernández de Mosteyrín, Jaume Ferrete, Claugia Pagès, Iskandar Rementeria, Natalia Suárez, Marina Suárez, Mugerza Ronse
During the 1978 negotiations for a new bargaining agreement in the metalworking sector, a group of militant libertarians defend their radical stance before their factory workmates while looking on crestfallen as the workers’ movement falls to pieces.
DUAN PIAN GU SHI / SHORT STORY
WU LANG (CHINA)
Country(ies) of production: China
Cast: Jue Huang, Meng Li
A middle-aged man dreams of his wife who he hasn’t met for a long time, saying goodbye to him. He tries to save the relationship when he wakes up.
EL AUGE DEL HUMANO 3 / THE HUMAN SURGE 3
EDUARDO WILLIAMS (ARGENTINA)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina – Portugal – Netherlands – Taiwan – Brazil – China
Cast: Meera Nadarasa, Shakira Navamani, Livia Silvano Pacaya, Abel Navarro, Ri Ri Yang
Different groups of people wander in a dark, rainy and windy world. They are spending time together, trying to escape from their depressing jobs, constantly meandering towards the mystery of new possibilities.
GAMOPITULI KHALKHI / WE ARE THE HOLLOW MEN
Short film
RATI ONELI (GEORGIA)
Country(ies) of production: Georgia
Cast: Kakha Kintsurashvili, Murman Jinoria
After years of absence and failure, a prodigal son is compelled to return and live with his elderly father. The two men, who are struggling with their conflicting emotions, are forced to deal with their memories, dreams, and fears in a world without the woman who once brought them together.
HERE
BAS DEVOS (BELGIUM)
Country(ies) of production: Belgium
Cast: Stefan Gota, Liyo Gong
Stefan, a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels, is on the verge of moving back home. He cooks up a big pot of soup with leftovers in his fridge, to hand out as a goodbye gift to friends and family. As he gets ready to go, he meets a young Belgian-Chinese woman who is preparing a doctorate on mosses. Her attention for the near-invisible stops him in his tracks.
L’ÎLE / THE ISLAND
DAMIEN MANIVEL (FRANCE)
Country(ies) of production: France
Cast: Rosa Berder, Damoh Ikheteah, Olga Milshtein, Ninon Botz, Youn Berder, Celeste Duménil, Jules Danger
Rosa and her friends have decided to spend the night on “the island”, a stretch of beach that has become their realm. It’s the last night of the summer, they’re turning eighteen, experiencing everything, and saying their goodbyes.
LA PALISIADA
PHILIP SOTNYCHENKO (UKRAINE)
Country(ies) of production: Ukraine
Cast: Andrii Zhurba, Novruz Pashayev, Valeria Oleinikova, Olena Mamchur, Oleksandr Parkhomenko
Ukraine, 1996. 5 months before the moratorium on the death penalty. Two old friends, a police detective and a forensic psychiatrist, are investigating the murder of a colleague whose widow both of them loved when they were young. Immersed in memories of the past, they unconsciously create a future in which their children will have to live, reaping the fruits of their parents’ lost hopes.
LOS DELINCUENTES / THE DELINQUENTS
RODRIGO MORENO (ARGENTINA)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina – Brazil – Chile – Luxembourg
Cast: Daniel Elías, Esteban Bigliardi, Margarita Molfino
Morán is a bank employee in Buenos Aires who dreams up a risky plan to liberate himself and his co-worker Román from the shackles of working life: Morán will steal enough cash from the bank to fund their retirement if Román hides the money for him after he confesses and serves prison time; in three years’ time, they’ll reunite, split the cash, and never have to work again. Departing to the countryside to fulfill his side of the deal, the less adventurous Román finds himself transformed by Morán’s idyllic vision of economic liberation far from the rigors of urban life. But what is the true cost of freedom?
MAMÁNTULA
Medium-length film
ION DE SOSA (SPAIN)
Country(ies) of production: Germany – Spain
Cast: Lorena Iglesias Lista, Moisés Richart, Marta Bassols
Mamántula is the boy everyone wants, but he is also, secretly, a giant spider cross-dressed as a human, fruit of a brief encounter in a far-off paradise. In an alternative past of brutalist saunas, never-ending subway corridors and detectives in trench coats and hats, each of Mamántula’s lovers succumb to the insatiable lust of blood and semen; yet another thread in the stellar spider’s web he is weaving so that he can return to the dimension to which he belongs.
MIXTAPE LA PAMPA
ANDRES DI TELLA (ARGENTINA)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina – Chile
This is the cinematographic diary of an extended trip across the Pampas, on the trail of Guillermo Enrique Hudson, aka William Henry Hudson. Hudson is an enigmatic figure, full of paradoxes: he was an Argentine gaucho who became an English writer. He fought in the army against the “savages” but also defended them. He wrote obsessively about his native land, but never returned. In the twists and turns of the road, emerges a mix of documentary speculation, personal memory… and dreams.
OR PANAS YACHID / SINGLE LIGHT
SHAYLEE ATARY (ISRAEL)
Country(ies) of production: Israel
Cast: Yael Elkana, Ben Ze’ev Rabian
Lali is sexually assaulted on a dark road in a Tel Aviv parking lot. Awake, yet unable to move an eye, she stares at a single streetlight. The next morning, Lali wakes up to a reality which she refuses to accept.
ORLANDO, MI BIOGRAFÍA POLÍTICA / ORLANDO, MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
PAUL B. PRECIADO (SPAIN)
Country(ies) of production: France
In 1928, Virgina Woolf published Orlando, the first novel in which the lead character changes sex in the middle of the story. A century later, the philosopher Paul B. Preciado decides to write a letter to Virginia Woolf: his Orlando has left the fiction and leads a life he could never have imagined.
OYU
ATSUSHI HIRAI (JAPAN)
Country(ies) of production: France
Cast: Okihido Yoshizawa, Hisako Mizuki, Kôta Tsunezawa, Satchiko Okuno
It is the last day of the year and night falls on the small town of Toyama, Japan. A man goes to the public bath to retrieve a forgotten object. But once inside, the promise of a hot bath compels him to stay.
QUITTER LA NUIT / THROUGH THE NIGHT
DELPHINE GIRARD (CANADA)
Country(ies) of production: Belgium – France – Canada
Cast: Veerle Baetens, Selma Alaoui, Guillaume Duhesme, Anne Dorval
One night, a woman in danger calls the police. Anna takes the call. A man is arrested. Weeks go by, the courts search for evidence, and Aly, Anna and Dary face the echoes of that night that they cannot leave behind.
SUIGYO NO MAJIWARI / TWO OF US
KOHEI IGARASHI (JAPAN)
Country(ies) of production: Japan – France
Cast: Hiroki Sano, Yoshinori Miyata
Sano and Miyata, two childhood friends, are on a trip together in a resort hotel facing the Pacific Ocean. Miyata is devoted to conspiracy theories and he tries to get Sano to believe this idea. But Sano doesn’t believe it, and they fight. As Miyata’s phone keeps ringing all day, Sano loses patience and takes the call. It was a phone call from Miyata’s father, who was saying unintelligible things, probably from dementia. Sano hangs up the phone in confusion and tries to go home with Miyata.
SĪLAN
Medium-length film
ASHMITA GUHA NEOGI (INDIA)
Country(ies) of production: France
Cast: Mitali Jagtap Varadkar, Bhushan Vikas, Tara Mandre
In a remote coastal village in western India, two estranged siblings, Rachana and Prakash, reunite for their mother’s funeral rites. As they spend the next couple of days together, the man and the woman come closer but with great caution; while one tries to forget, the other tries to preserve the memory of their love.
XUE YUN / ABSENCE
WU LANG (CHINA)
Country(ies) of production: China
Cast: Kang-Sheng Lee
Yu returns to his hometown on Hainan Island after ten years in prison, and tries to rekindle his relationship with his former lover, Hong. Hong’s plan to buy an apartment forces them to face predicaments, while their tenacious perseverance empowers them to carry on with their lives and make up for each other’s absence.
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