James Marsh’s Samuel Beckett Biopic ‘Dance First’ To Close San Sebastian

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Javier Bardem, winner of a San Sebastian 2023 Donostia Award for career achievement, is putting back his on-stage acceptance of the distinction until the 2024 San Sebastian Film Festival. The postponement is due to the “limits imposed under the strike called by the U.S. Actors Union (SAG-AFTRA),” the San Sebastian Festival announced Friday.

French filmmaker Claire Denis has been announced as the jury president for the Official Section of the 71st San Sebastian Film Festival, running from September 22-30.

Holly Jones Ahead of its world premiere at this year’s San Sebastian Horizontes Latinos strand, Buenos Aires-based production house Historias Cinematográficas has shared with Variety an exclusive first look at the trailer for Lucía Puenzo’s energetic new film “Los Impactados,” with Variety. Produced by Historias Cinematográficas, the Puenzo family production house led by Academy Award winner Luis Puenzo (“The Official Story,” “Old Gringo”), in association with Exile Content Studio and Non Stop Studios, the project is co-produced by Juan de Dios and Pablo Larraín’s indie outfit Fábula, and turning on a study of rebirth after severe trauma. Written by Puenzo and Lorena Ventimiglia, the singular narrative follows Ada, played by Mariana Di Girolamo who starred opposite Gael Garcia Bernal in Pablo Larraín’s “Ema,” after she’s struck by lightning and on through to her intriguing metamorphosis alongside an enigmatic and experimental doctor, played by “El Último Hereje” lead Germán Palacios, and a group of fellow survivors who find themselves increasingly drawn to electric current.

Netflix’s Teresa Moneo, Mubi’s Bobby Allen, Cinetic Media’s John Sloss, and Jeb Brody, President of Production at Amblin Partners, are among the names set for CAA Media Finance and the San Sebastian Film Festival’s second annual Creative Investors’ Conference. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent CAA Media Finance’s Roeg Sutherland, Goodfellas’ Vincent Maraval and Cinetic Media’s John Sloss look set to attend the San Sebastian Festival’s second Creative Investors’ Conference, co-organised once again with CAA Media Finance. Bringing to San Sebastian the biggest bevy of high-powered U.S. execs and industry movers-and-shakers to attend the Spanish Festival, further CIC attendees include Netflix’s Teresa Moneo, Amblin Partners’ Jeb Brody and Anonymous Content’s David Davoli as well as K&S’s Matías Mosteirín and Infinity Hill’s Axel Kuschevatzky, as the Conference opens up to Latin America.

Tom Sandoval got a rude welcome to San Francisco when he unwittingly found himself in the middle of a bizarre altercation at a cast event.

Ariana Madix is merging worlds.

Marta Balaga Paula Hernández’s “A Ravaging Wind” (“El viento que arrasa”) has debuted a poster and trailer ahead of its premieres at Toronto and San Sebastian. Based on the novel by Selva Almada – and written by Hernández and Leonel D’Agostino – “A Ravishing Wind” will play Toronto’s Centrepiece program, before opening San Sebastian’s Horizontes Latinos, a showcase of many of the best Latin American movies of the last year. It sees Alfredo Castro as Reverend Pearson, an evangelical pastor who travels Argentina by car in the 1990s with his daughter Leni (Almudena González, seen in “Argentina, 1985”).

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Headlined respectively by “Sound of Metal” lead Riz Ahmed and “Matrix” stars Jessica Henwick and Hugo Weaving, Christos Nikou’s “Fingernails” and Kitty Green’s “The Royal Hotel” figure among seven newly unveiled films which will play in main competition at September’s San Sebastian Film Festival. Also in the running are buzz titles “A Journey in Spring,” from Taiwan’s Peng Tzu-Hui, Wang Ping-Wen, and “Kalak,” directed by Denmark’s Isabella Eklöf.

Aussie filmmaker Kitty Green’s latest pic, The Royal Hotel, starring Julia Garner, and Fingernails, the latest film from Christos Nikou, with Riz Ahmed and Jessie Buckley, have been added to San Sebastian’s competition lineup.

Eagled-eyed Vanderpump Rules fans noticed that Raquel Leviss (who is now going by her legal name Rachel) seemingly unfollowed Tom Sandoval in the recent past.

San Sebastian Fetes Veteran Director Victor Erice

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Victor Erice, one of the greatest of Spanish filmmakers, will receive a prestigious Donostia Award, given for career achievement, granted by the San Sebastian Film Festival. The award will coincide with screening of Erice’s latest film, “Close Your Eyes” (Cerrar los Ojos), which world premiered at the Cannes Festival this May.

Sandra Bullock plans to scatter her late partner Bryan Randall's ashes at sea in a place that had a special meaning to them both.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “Dance First,” a portrait of Irish writer Samuel Beckett starring Gabriel Byrne and directed by Oscar winner James Marsh, will close this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival, playing out of competition. Byrne, a memorable lead in “The Usual Suspects” and “Miller’s Crossing” who also won a Golden Globe for his performance in “In Treatment,” plays Samuel Beckett, driving into his deep contradictions and inner torment of a writer who was a Parisian bon vivant, a WWII Resistance fighter and then Nobel Prize-winning playwright who, however, became a recluse, living the last years of his life in a single room in a nursing home, ashamed of past actions and convinced that for much of his life he had been a failure.

Neon’s re-release of Park Chan-Wook’s 2003 Oldboy grossed an estimated $495k on 250 screens this weekend for a total cume of $880k over five days. It’s set to cross the $1 million in its first week back – surpassing a cumulative North American gross of $707k with original distributor Metro Tartan Film. The classic revenge thriller came out in 2003 and was released Stateside in 2005. It was the first South Korean film to win the Grand Prix in Cannes in 2004 and took in $15 million worldwide.

and Tom Sandoval seemingly stood in the same room together this week at a Maui relief effort fundraiser hosted at Sur, if this TikTok shared by user @elaineeeqvn can be believed.Of course, the two are never captured directly interacting. But Sur, as we know, is a very small restaurant.

EXCLUSIVE: Israeli sales house Go2Films has changed its international management team, as 13-year company veteran Hadar Taylor Schechter exits ahead of the Toronto and San Sebastián film festivals.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Living legend Hayao Miyazaki’s animated fantasy epic “The Boy and the Heron,” the latest from Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli, will open the 71st San Sebastian Festival, screening on Sept. 22. Bowing San Sebastian, Miyazaki’s film, which he has declared to be his last, will score an extraordinary double of opening both the Toronto and San Sebastian festivals in the space of a couple of weeks.

Hayao Miyazaki will open the 71st edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival with his latest pic, The Boy and the Heron.