Berlinale Golden Bear for Best Film winner Dahomey by Mati Dop will open the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section of the San Sebastian Festival’s 72nd edition. The section will include the participation of 23 titles from filmmakers such as Leos Carax, Arnaud Desplechin, Elena López Riera, Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias and Jane Schoenbrun competing for the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award.

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera will close with April (Aprili) by Dea Kulumbegashvili.

Mati Diop’s Dahomey addresses the debate sparked by the return to Africa of 26 treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey looted in 1892 by the French colonial troops. April (Aprili) from Dea Kulumbegashvili is about an obstetrician accused of negligence.

All of the films in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera compete for the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award that comes with 20,000 euros divided between the director (6,000 euros) and the distribution company of the film in Spain (14,000 euros).

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera 2024 Lineup

Dahomey
Mati Diop (France)
Country(ies) of production: France
Opening Film
November 2021. 26 royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey are about to leave Paris to return to their country of origin, the present-day Republic of Benin. Along with thousands of others, these artefacts were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. But what attitude to adopt to these ancestors’ homecoming in a country that had to forge ahead in their absence? While the soul of the artifacts is freed, the debate rages among students at the University of Abomey-Calavi.

Aprili / April
Dea Kulumbegashvili (Georgia)
Country(ies) of production: France – Italy – Georgia
Cast: Ia Sukhitashvili, Kakha Kintsurashvili, Merab Ninidze
Closing Film
Nina works in the only small hospital of a provincial town as an OB-GYN. Single and in abstinence from personal relationships, she is unconditionally devoted to her Hippocratic oath. When a newborn dies within seconds of being delivered under her supervision, she is accused of wrongdoings. Under investigation, every detail of Nina’s personal and professional life is being scrutinized. Despite the risks, Nina remains devoted to her duty as a doctor, committed to doing what nobody else will.

Across the Waters
Short film
Viv Li (China)
Country(ies) of production: France
Cast: Qinglian Zhao, Yuxin Yang
Sandstorm blows, water becomes scarce. In a remote mining town without any radio signals, a quirky teenage girl gets curious about a passing truck driver.

Alle die Du bist / Every You Every Me
Michael Fetter Nathansky (Germany)
Country(ies) of production: Germany – Spain
Cast: Aenne Schwarz, Carlo Ljubek, Youness Aabbaz, Sara Fazilat, Naila Schuberth
WIP Europa 2022

What if the person you love the most suddenly becomes a stranger in your eyes? Nadine, a dedicated factory worker, tries to revive her relationship by reconnecting with her deepest emotions. But who did she once see in him that she can no longer find? A romantic social drama about the painful process of falling out of love and the initial magic of falling in love.

Boku no ohisama / My Sunshine
Hiroshi Okuyama (Japan)
Country(ies) of production: Japan – France
Cast: Sosuke Ikematsu, Keitatsu Koshiyama, Kiara Nakanishi
On a small Japanese island, life revolves around the changing seasons. Winter is time for ice hockey at school, but Takuya isn’t too thrilled about it. His real interest lies in Sakura, a figure skating rising star from Tokyo, for whom he starts to develop a genuine fascination. Coach and former champion Arakawa, spots potential in Takuya, and decides to mentor him to form a duo with Sakura for an upcoming competition.

C’est pas moi / It’s Not Me
Medium-length film
Leos Carax (France)
Country(ies) of production: France
Cast: Denis Lavant, Kateryna Yuspina, Nastya Golubeva, Loreta Juodkaite
A self-portrait traversing a filmography spanning more than 40 years from the director who, while questioning the decisive moments of his life, captures the political fears of the time.

Cómo ser Pehuén Pedre / How to be Pehuén Pedre
Short film
Federico Luis (Argentina)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina – Germany
Cast: Pehuén Pedre, Lorenzo Ferro, Agustín Daulte
Pehuén Pedre trains two actors for an examination at the civil registry, where both will have the opportunity to obtain their own disability certificate.

Etorriko da (Eta zure begiak izango ditu) / When It Comes (It Will Have Your Eyes)
Short film
Izibene Oñederra (Spain)
Country(ies) of production: Spain
A small community brought to its knees by an environmental crisis adapts as it can to the new reality. The more privileged inhabitants enjoy a hedonistic life based on the notion of carpe diem, while the others have no choice but to get by as they can. What does the future hold? If there’s nothing else, can anything save us?

Gimn chume / Hymn of the Plague
Short film
Ataka51 (Russia)
Country(ies) of production: Germany – Russia
In an old Soviet recording studio, a group of musicians attempt to record a composition based on Pushkin’s play A Feast in Time of Plague. A weird and frightening phenomena disturbs the musicians – whether it is the spirits of the past or an echo of a war. Nobody notices what is happening around them until the very end.

I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun (USA)
Country(ies) of production: USA
Cast: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Fred Durst, Danielle Deadwyler
Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show – a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.

Las novias del sur / Southern Brides
Medium-length film
Elena López Riera (Spain)
Country(ies) of production: Spain – Switzerland
Mature women discuss marriage, their first time, their intimate relationship with sexuality. By repeating these ancient rites, the director questions her own lack of wedlock, children and, with it, a chain of disappearing mother-daughter relations.

Leela
Short film
Tanmay Chowdhary (India)
Country(ies) of production: India
Cast: Sobita Kudtarkar, Naina Sareen
In a coastal town in India, two young women encounter the news of a missing acquaintance Leela. Rumors about her death have spread, with uncertainty surrounding whether she took her own life or managed to escape to the city. As they go on about their day debating her disappearance, the nature of their relationship in this dead end town reveals itself.

Monólogo colectivo / Collective Monologue
Jessica Sarah Rinland (Argentina)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina
Ikusmira Berriak 2020

Intimate and fragmented moments unfold in a community of zoos and animal rescue centers across Argentina. As histories of these institutions are uncovered, dedicated workers commit both day and night to caring for the remaining enclosed animals, fostering a mutual bond that transcends imagined boundaries between human and animal.

NAI NIU / MILKY WHITE
Short film
YoYo LIU (China)
Country(ies) of production: China
Cast: Wanli TIAN
In a remote rural area, a mother tragically dies during childbirth, leaving behind a daughter who witnesses the event. With no breast milk for the newborn, the family’s cow becomes their lifeline, providing sustenance and hope. The daughter’s bond with the cow deepens over time, until another ruthless tragedy strikes, shattering their fragile world once more.

Pepe
Nelson Carlo De los Santos Arias (Dominican Republic)
Country(ies) of production: Dominican Republic – France – Germany – Namibia
Cast: Jorge Puntillon Garcia, Sor María Rios, Steven Alexander, Nicolás Marin Caly
A voice that does not grasp the structural perception of time. From a trance, it traverses the languages of a historical event. Claiming to be the hippopotamus killed in Colombian lands. This is its story, which, like these neighbouring towns, was shaped by beings who died never truly knowing where they really were.

Sadac Dro Idga / Where Time Stood Still
Short film
Nino Benashvili (Georgia)
Country(ies) of production: Georgia – USA – Canada
Cast: Keta Lortkipanidze, Tamar Mdinaradze
A widowed mother and daughter’s ascetic life in an isolated village in the Caucasus mountains is interrupted by the arrival of a foreign traveller in need of shelter. His presence awakens erotic longing in both women, who are left to simmer in their guilty consciences after the traveller departs.

Sombra Grande / Big Shadow
Maximiliano Schonfeld (Argentina)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina
Cast: Blas Jaime , Mario Wendler, Darío Wendler, Emilia Gauss, Lucas Schell, Benigno Lell
WIP Latam 2023

A few years ago a man appeared, claiming to speak an ostensibly lost language: Chaná. In only a short time dictionaries were published and the language was completely recovered. This man also situated the Chaná people in the same place where the descendants of the Volga Germans, in the Entre Ríos province, are today inexorably losing their dialect.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Johan Grimonprez (Belgium)
Country(ies) of production: Belgium – France
Jazz and decolonization are entwined in this historical rollercoaster that rewrites the Cold War episode that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. It is 1961, six months after the admission of 16 newly independent African countries to the UN, a political earthquake that shifts the majority vote from the colonial powers to the Global South.

Spectateurs! / Filmlovers!
Arnaud Desplechin (France)
Country(ies) of production: France
Cast: Louis Birman, Mathieu Amalric, Françoise Lebrun, Milo Machado-Graner
“What does it mean, to go to the movies? Why have people been going for over one hundred years? I set out to celebrate movie theaters and their manifold magic. So I walked in the footsteps of young Paul Dédalus, as if in a filmgoer’s coming-of-age story. Memories, fiction and discoveries come together in an irrepressible torrent of pictures”. (Arnaud Desplechin)

Super Happy Forever
Kohei Igarashi (Japan)
Country(ies) of production: France – Japan
Cast: Hiroki Sano, Yoshinori Miyata, Nairu Yamamoto, Hoang Nhu Quynh
It’s summertime. Sano, whose wife Nagi died recently, is staying at a seaside hotel in Atami with Miyata, his best friend. Overcome by grief and nostalgia for the place, strangely, he starts looking for a red cap that Nagi had once misplaced. Five years earlier. Nagi, a young photographer on a sightseeing trip to the same hotel, meets Sano. As the days go by, they grow closer and fall in love. Before leaving, Sano gives her a red cap.

To a Land Unknown
Mahdi Fleifel (United Arab Emirates)
Country(ies) of production: UK – Palestine – France – Greece – Netherlands – Germany – Qatar – United Arab Emirates
Cast: Mahmood Bakri, Angeliki Papoulia, Mouataz Alshalton
Chatila and Reda are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens. But when Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his dangerous drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.

Ulysses
Hikaru Uwagawa (Japan)
Country(ies) of production: Japan – Spain
Cast: Alevtina Tikhonova, Dimitri Tikhonov, Enaitz Zulaika, Izumi Ishii, Kazuko Hara, Hikaru Uwagawa
Ikusmira Berriak 2023
A son and his immigrant mother in Madrid wait for his father to return. A Basque woman and a Japanese man meet in San Sebastian and he shares his stories about home. A drifting Japanese man returns to his family for Obon to welcome the spirits of the deceased. These fragmental stories of each daily life in different places of the world imply their reminiscence of home.

Yao yuan de xia wu / Here Comes the Sun
Short film
Wu Lang (China)
Country(ies) of production: China
Cast: Fu Lihua, Timmy Xu, LI Meng, Weng Fen
On the seaside, a rocket base breaks the tranquility of the fishing village. As the rocket takes off, life begins to change. Grandma wakes up during the evacuation, longing to find Ah-Wen and the good old days.