Colombian writer-director Laura Mora’s prize-winning road movie ‘Kings of the World’ is a messy but big-hearted love letter to the loveless.
(1014)
70th San Sebastian International Film Festival
09/16/2022
Festival Reviews
The Employer and the Employee
A subtle character study successfully explores guilt, filial duty and labor relations between a young farmhand and his boss, set among the vast soybean plantations along the Uruguay Brazil border.
Winter Boy
French veteran director Christophe Honoré’s latest is a study of grief and teenage exploration with great performances but a somewhat messy screenplay.
Maternal
A cocky 14-year-old rebel becomes a mother in Pilar Palomero’s closely observed and vibrant tale, whose mixed pro/non-pro cast is convincingly upbeat.
San Sebastian: The Verdict
San Sebastian celebrated its 70th anniversary with grace and good programing.
Pornomelancolía
Director Manuel Abramovich’s controversial docu-fiction portrait of Mexican porn star Lalo Santos, ‘Pornomelancolía’ is empathetic and absorbing, despite being disowned by its leading man.
Marlowe
For the 100th film of his career, Liam Neeson switches from action thriller to classic film noir in a flyweight but generally entertaining post scriptum to Raymond Chandler’s immortal detective series, co-starring Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange.
San Sebastian: The Awards
San Sebastian’s top prize went to a Colombian coproduction for the first time in its history, and to a woman director for the third year running.
Runner
Writer-director Marian Mathias celebrates small acts of kindness and empathy in her opaque but haunting debut feature ‘Runner’.
Walk Up
Emotions are delicately explored over drinks in South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s beguiling and deceptively simple relationship tale.
The Wonder
Oscar-winning director Sebastien Lelio’s handsome literary mystery thriller ‘The Wonder’ stars Florence Pugh as a kick-ass nurse fighting fake news and dubious miracles in 19th century Ireland.
The Substitute
Set in the barrios of Buenos Aires, Diego Lerman’s classroom drama movingly praises a dissatisfied young lit teacher who can’t help but interfere in his students’ lives.
Great Yarmouth – Provisional Figures
Brexit Britain offers only hellish horrors to exploited migrant workers in ‘Great Yarmouth – Provisional Figures’, a bleakly compelling social-realist thriller from Portuguese director Marco Martins.
Il Boemo
The life and loves of 18th century Czech opera composer Josef Myslivecek, and his dazzling Italian career and fall into obscurity, are lovingly and authentically reconstructed in Petr Vaclav’s sumptuous period production.
Thunder
Carmen Jaquier’s powerful debut feature ‘Thunder’ chronicles a stormy collision between religious faith and sexual rapture in early 20th century Switzerland.
Sparta
Screening in San Sebastian competition after it was pulled from Toronto, Ulrich Seidl’s most controversial film to date underlines the sleaze and creepiness of pedophilia so forcefully it is painful to watch.
The Great Silence
Katrin Brocks’ feature debut takes full advantage of its exotic setting in a highly dramatized if not always convincing story about a devout young woman who’s about to become a nun when her violent brother turns up at the convent.
Prison 77
Director Alberto Rodriguez grippingly reconstructs the post-Franco years, using historical riots and prisoners demanding human rights as a microcosm of Spain as it made a screeching transition from fascism to democracy.
Vicenta B.
Director Carlos Lechuga sends a powerful farewell letter to a country adrift in depression and despair in this heartbreaking chronicle of the post-Cuban revolution.
Drive My Car
Winner of the Academy Award for best international feature, Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s story of how love survives death is a long, measured, ultimately mesmerizing examination of the human soul.
As in Heaven
In the 19th century, a 14-year-old Danish girl struggles between her will and God’s in Tea Lindeburg’s impressionistic period drama, winner of the best director nod in San Sebastian.
San Sebastian 2021: The Verdict
The crowds were back at the 69th San Sebastian International Film Festival (around 90% compared to 2019 levels), but not the carefree atmosphere of leisurely walks with friends, meetings in the crowded pintxos (snack) bars, and swims on La Concha beach, for which the...
Blue Moon
Trapped in a violent family, a young woman rebels in Alina Grigore’s assured and absorbing first feature, another gift from contemporary Romanian cinema.
I Want to Talk About Duras
In her many novels, plays and movies, author and filmmaker Marguerite Duras would often make herself a character in the stories she was telling, mixing autobiography and fiction into a seamless blend that the French called autofiction. It was writing with a capital I,...
The Good Boss
Javier Bardem is the main attraction as a smooth-talking factory owner in Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s drawing room social satire about modern labor.
Maixabel
Award-winning Spanish filmmaker Icair Bollain chillingly dramatizes the real-life encounter between a strong-minded widow and the repentant Basque terrorists who murdered her husband.
Benediction
The life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon movingly expresses the traumas of war and love in one of writer-director Terence Davies’ finest creations.
One Second
Zhang Yimou ironically salutes the movies and their fervent audiences during China’s Cultural Revolution, in a stylistic pastiche that drags a little.
Kings of the World
Colombian writer-director Laura Mora’s prize-winning road movie ‘Kings of the World’ is a messy but big-hearted love letter to the loveless.
The Employer and the Employee
A subtle character study successfully explores guilt, filial duty and labor relations between a young farmhand and his boss, set among the vast soybean plantations along the Uruguay Brazil border.
Winter Boy
French veteran director Christophe Honoré’s latest is a study of grief and teenage exploration with great performances but a somewhat messy screenplay.
Maternal
A cocky 14-year-old rebel becomes a mother in Pilar Palomero’s closely observed and vibrant tale, whose mixed pro/non-pro cast is convincingly upbeat.
San Sebastian: The Verdict
San Sebastian celebrated its 70th anniversary with grace and good programing.
Pornomelancolía
Director Manuel Abramovich’s controversial docu-fiction portrait of Mexican porn star Lalo Santos, ‘Pornomelancolía’ is empathetic and absorbing, despite being disowned by its leading man.
Marlowe
For the 100th film of his career, Liam Neeson switches from action thriller to classic film noir in a flyweight but generally entertaining post scriptum to Raymond Chandler’s immortal detective series, co-starring Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange.
San Sebastian: The Awards
San Sebastian’s top prize went to a Colombian coproduction for the first time in its history, and to a woman director for the third year running.
Runner
Writer-director Marian Mathias celebrates small acts of kindness and empathy in her opaque but haunting debut feature ‘Runner’.
Walk Up
Emotions are delicately explored over drinks in South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s beguiling and deceptively simple relationship tale.
Awards Corner
San Sebastian
- No awards yet.