27th July – Eleven productions from nineteen countries will compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award at the San Sebastian Festival, whose 71st edition will run from 22 to 30 September. Of the total selected movies, seven are first works, while the rest are the second films by their authors, as announced today to the press by the director of the San Sebastian Festival, José Luis Rebordinos, and the director of Kutxabank’s network in Gipuzkoa, Marta Madinabeitia.
Figuring among those competing with their second full-length films is the actor, director and screenwriter Liang Ming (Yichun, China. 1984), whose feature debut, Wisdom Tooth (2020), garnered acclaim at several international festivals. The moviemaker will open New Directors with Xiao Yao You / Carefree Days, the adaptation of Ban Yu’s homonymous novel following a young patient as she tries to find her place in the world.
Also to show his second film is Daichi Murase (Shigaraki, Japan. 1997), who, having directed several shorts and the feature-length Roll (2020), will now bring Kiri no Fuchi / Beyond the Fog, which will be the closing film of the New Directors section. The filmmaker proposes the intimate portrait of a family who have been running a boarding house in a remote mountain village for generations.
With his debut, À l’ouest de Pluton / West of Pluto (2008), Henry Bernadet (Quebec City, Canada. 1977) participated in various international festivals including Rotterdam and Zurich. Now, in Les Rayons Gamma / Gamma Rays he brings the audience a generational portrait of a group of youngsters who live in Montreal.
In addition, New Directors will also include a second film of Spanish production, La estrella azul / The Blue Star, already announced, by Javier Macipe (Zaragoza, 1987). The movie takes a fictional approach to the story of the musician from Zaragoza Mauricio Aznar, founder of bands such as Golden Zippes, Más Birras and Almagato. His first movie, Los inconvenientes de no ser Dios (2014), earned Macipe the best debut film award at Zaragoza Film Festival. He has also directed fiction shorts including Gastos incluidos (2019) and Os meninos do rio (2014), both finalists at the Goyas.
The other moviemakers included in the selection will compete with their debut films. Filmmaker Farhad Delaram (Teheran, Iran. 1988) will therefore participate in New Directors with his first inroads to the world of feature films, Ashil / Achilles, about a young moviemaker who works in a hospital and whose life changes after meeting a mysterious young girl.
The first work from Askhat Kuchinhirekov (Almaty, Kazakhstan. 1982) is entitled Bauryna salu, the name given to an ancient nomad tradition whereby the firstborn child is handed over to the grandparents for them to look after it instead of its parents. Prior to moving behind the camera, Kuchinhirekov has worked as an actor and assistant director on titles including Tulpan (2008) and Aika (2019), by Sergei Dvortsevoy, which won the Un Certain Regard Award and Best Actress Award at Cannes, respectively.
Taylor Russell, Ewan McGregor and Ellen Burstyn star in Mother, Couch!, the debut film from Niclas Larsson (Malmö, Sweden. 1990). The film begins when three estranged siblings are brought together when their mother refuses to move from a couch in a furniture store.
A former screenwriter and editor, Ilia Malakhova (Saint Petersburg, Russia. 1973) now makes her feature film debut with Hi, mom, focused on the figure of Kira, a 38 year-old woman who has never recovered from her mother’s disappearance and who lives in the same house as her younger sister and her daughters.
Juan Sebastián Quebrada (Medellín, Colombia. 1987), who presented his graduation film Días extraños (2015) at Bacifi and his short film La casa del árbol (2017) at Toronto Festival, now shows his feature film debut, El otro hijo / The Other Son, which participated in the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum while at the project stage in 2020. The Colombian moviemaker follows the steps of a young boy as he tries to find the strength he needs to keep living after the death of his brother.
With previous experience as an assistant director and novelist, moviemaker Diwa Shah (Nainital, India. 1995) debuts with Bahadur the Brave, a film set during the early days of the pandemic in an Indian village on the border with Nepal, where a Nepali immigrant tries to find the money to cure his sick son.
Last Shadow at First Light, also present in the selection, comes in the shape of the feature film debut from Nicole Midori Woodford (Singapore,1986), narrating the trip to Japan by a young girl who, tormented by repeated apparitions, sets out to find her missing mother. Her previous short films have participated in festivals including Busan, Clermont-Ferrand and Tokyo.
These eleven films compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award, coming with 50,000 euros to be divided equally between the director and the distributor of the film in Spain. The Kutxabank-New Directors Award is sponsored by Kutxabank, an official Festival collaborator. The Kutxabank-New Directors Award Jury has the task of viewing and deciding the winning film. Films in the New Directors section are also candidates for the TCM Youth Award, decided by a jury of 150 students between the ages of 18 and 25.
While New Directors is the example of San Sebastian Festival’s pledge to new talents, it is not alone; first and second movies are also programmed in almost all sections, and first works are screened in Nest, the competitive section for shorts by students from film schools all over the world. The Festival also heads, together with Tabakalera and the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, the programme under which support goes to innovative audiovisual projects, Ikusmira Berriak, with its artist residencies programme.