It took a strong jury presided over by J.A. Bayona, the director of Society of the Snow, to make sense of the eclectic range of films in competition this year at the San Sebstian International Film Festival (SSIFF). The Golden Shell went to Sundays (Los domingos) from Spanish director Alauda Ruiz de Azua, the sly and paradoxical, but often very moving, tale about how the life of a middle-class Spanish family is turned upside down when the 17-year-old daughter considers becoming a cloistered nun.
The Jury Prize was given to another of the best-liked films in the festival, Good Valley Stories. Director José Luis Guerin’s documentary was admired for the authenticity and good humor with which it portrays a sprawling international community outside Barcelona that includes many migrants and refugees.
The Best Director award was presented to Belgian filmmaker Joaquim Lafosse for his autobiographical, playful account of an unusual vacation, Six Days in Spring.
And the Audience Award? Voters didn’t hesitate: they chose the most intensely emotional and directly political film of the moment, The Voice of Hind Rajab. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania recreates a horrific real incident in which a Palestinian girl and her family are killed during the Israeli invasion of Gaza. The Euskadi Basque Country Agenda 2030 prize, awarded by the regional Basque government, also went to the heart-breaking Gaza docudrama, fresh from its Venice premiere.
What was most remarkable was that practically everybody who went on stage at the closing ceremony (including the hosts) were wearing a “Stop Genozida” button or the Palestine flag (“genozida” is genocide in Basque). And Ruiz de Azua, the Golden Shell winner, remarked that her moral compass tells her “this is the moment to condemn genocide in Gaza.”
Political protest has long been a fixture at San Sebastian, on screen and off, with Gaza clearly a major galvanising issue this year. Pro-Palestine slogans were carved into the sand of the main beach while a street protest blocked the main downtown bridge early in the festival, making access to certain film screenings tricky.
But the most unexpected political statement in the program was made in Nuremberg, starring a diabolically oily Russell Crowe as Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering. Though it takes place 80 years ago, James Vanderbilt’s historical courtroom drama is full of cautionary warnings about resurgent fascism in modern America, earning loud cheers with every heavily underscored allusion to Donald Trump.
San Sebastian Audiences
Festival audiences, in fact, have never shied away from making their voices heard, and they are largely responsible for San Sebastian’s 73 years of success. Even though it was inaugurated in 1953 in an impoverished post-war Spain under a dictatorship, at a time when the local film industry was barely producing 20 films a year, almost all of them religious. Today the local Basque and Spanish audiences still fill the theaters at every screening. One crowd may applaud and shout “guapa” at Angelina Jolie. Another long line waits under a downpour at 10 p.m. for a black-and-white subtitled oldie. This respectful but opinionated audience is likely to burst into spontaneous applause halfway through a screening —especially at political dialogues. And – though maddening to some outsiders — it’s a local tradition to rhythically applaud the trombone for 15 seconds, during the festival’s promotional video that plays before every film.
Location: San Sebastian
This year the city of San Sebastian itself played a prominent role in multiple films, ranging from the queer coming-of-old-age comedy-drama Maspalomas to the Ron Perlman-starring revenge thriller The Gentleman. The local setting went down well with the audience, clearly excited to see the Basque city’s representations on screen that were sometimes thoughtful, and never less than entertaining.
Welcome Streamers
After Venice, San Sebastian is the biggest European festival to showcase Netflix releases (including this year’s opening film, 27 Nights). Unlike in Venice, professionals in attendance generally do not feel the need to reflexively boo the big capital N the minute it appears on screen. In fact, that outrage was saved for a different streamer, as MUBI has recently come under fire for its ties to an investor with connections to an Israeli defense-tech startup founded during the current Gaza conflict. This also spilled over into the question of freedom of the press, since a Spanish journalist’s question about the matter was flatly rejected when addressed to Jennifer Lawrence (whose most recent star vehicle Die My Love will be released theatrically by MUBI).
