San Sebastian 2026: The Verdict
The 74th SSIFF was a bright year for Spanish films, Nordic pictures and gay-themed stories.
San Sebastian 2026
Chicas tristes
La directora debutante Fernanda Tovar evita la estética sombría pero no la seriedad en el tema del abuso sexual.
Lovers Sleep Alone
Massih Parsaei soulfully deals with life far from home in his feature debut ‘Lovers Sleep Alone’, screened in San Sebastián’s New Directors competition.
La ilusión de un verano sin fin
Dos mujeres del campo argentino son las actrices más que los sujetos en el primer largometraje de la fotógrafa Alessandra Sanguinetti, sincero, emotivo y con una estética muy elevada.
In My Father’s Room
In her first feature film, best-selling novelist Maha Harada captures the quiet grace of Japanese traditions from art to poetry, cherry blossoms to the tea ceremony, avoiding cliché with an evocative sensibility and a modern sense of humor.
The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer
Two women from the rural Argentinian countryside make playful actresses in a sincere, emotional, yet stylish first feature from photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti.
La bola negra
El dúo de directores y guionistas españoles Javier Calvo y Javier Ambrossi revisitan la vida y el legado del ícono literario queer Federico García Lorca en esta épica deslumbrante, aunque ligeramente torpe; ha sido galardonada y ahora aspira al Óscar, cuenta con el respaldo de Penélope Cruz y Pedro Almodóvar.
The Last Goodbye
A feckless funeral director wrestles with financial, emotional and existential angst in ‘The Last Goodbye’, an erratic but engaging tragicomedy from Basque writer-director Koldo Almandoz.
Tender Loving Care
Small but engrossing, Mike Leigh’s ‘Tender Loving Care’ casts a harsh light on the underfunded British health and welfare system, which divides even death unequally into its haves and have-nots.
Mike Leigh’s Tender, Loving Career
The great English director Mike Leigh might be done with filmmaking after his sixteenth feature ‘Tender Loving Care’, currently playing on the festival circuit.
Heart of the Beast
In David Ayer’s gripping tale of survival, both the man and the dog are war veterans grappling with PTSD and struggling to make their way back to civilization.
Ruega por nosotras
Religión, patriarcado y dictadura prueban ser una fórmula devastadora y algunas veces fatal en esta melodramática pero efectiva película en competencia por la Concha de Oro
Pray for Us
Religion, patriarchy and dictatorship make a dangerous, sometimes fatal formula for young women in a melodramatic contestant for the Golden Shell
My Sad Dead
Grotesque, trippy psychological horror abounds along with redundancies in the feature film of Pablo Larrain’s ‘My Sad Dead’, a mixed bag of ghost stories set in contemporary Buenos Aires and an angry guide to Argentina’s social ills, laced with funeral humor.
The Harvester
David Pérez Sañudo returns to San Sebastián with ‘The Harvester’, an engrossing fact-based period piece revolving around a serial killer in the Basque Country.
La Bola Negra
Spanish writer-director duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi revisit the life and legacy of queer literary icon Federico García Lorca in their ravishing if slightly ungainly epic ‘La Bola Negra’, a prize-winning Oscar hopeful backed by Penélope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar.
A veces me entra la tristeza, a veces la rebelión
María Aparicio mezcla tristeza, rebelión, nostalgia y curiosidad en una película tan política como empática
Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion
María Aparicio mixes sadness, nostalgia, curiosity and rebellion in an empathetic, subtly political film.
5 minutos más
Una pareja en crisis se ve atrapada en una espiral de tiempo en este thriller fantástico —ingeniosamente construido, con humor negro, lleno de giros— del director español Javier Ruiz Caldera.
The Ballet Lesson
An absent father returns to take his two small children to their missing mother in a simple tale that blossoms into complexities about life and death like a piece of origami in Kazuya Murayama’s charming if at times overreaching ‘The Ballet Lesson’.
5 More Minutes
A troubled couple find themselves trapped inside a time loop in Spanish director Javier Ruiz Caldera’s twist-heavy, cleverly constructed, darkly funny fantasy thriller ‘5 More Minutes’.
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo’s classic novel gets an appropriately epic treatment in Fred Cavayé’s massively grand ‘Les Misérables’, starring Vincent Lindon and Tahar Rahim.
The Housewife
Naomi Watts plays a prim suburban housewife with a very dark past in Canadian director Ben Shirinian’s good-looking but heavy-handed debut feature, a based-on-reality period thriller set in 1960s New York.
Ghost Song
Fatih Akin’s ‘Ghost Song’ (‘Geister’) takes supernatural screen romance to its breaking point, but even those who don’t shed a tear over teenagers’ death wishes will admire the high-class scenery and pacing.
San Sebastián 2026: Vive la France!
The festival’s neighboring country is strongly present at San Sebastián 2026, be it with the newer titles or via the very interesting Retrospective.