San Sebastian-CAA Conference: Vincent Maraval, Pete Czernin, David Flynn, Fionnuala Jamison Debate Global Film Industry

Jessica Kiang Rather than horns, they look like tiny black catkins clinging to the grains on swaying stalks of rye. These little clusters — actually a fungus known as ergot — are a disease that affects the ovaries of their host plants, but can be made into an infusion that induces abortion in women.

In addition to her duties serving on the jury of Busan’s New Currents competition, U.S.-based producer Christina Oh will be meeting a group of Korean filmmakers at the festival to talk about upcoming film projects and attempt to build more bridges between the film industries of Korea and the U.S.

The San Sebastian Film Festival awarded O Corno (The Rye Horn) with the Golden Shell for Best Film. San Sebastián native Jaione Camborda took the top prize of the night for the feature she directed.

Jessica Kiang A predictably spectacular sunset spreads streaks of pink and orange across a northern Spanish late September sky, heralding the end of another packed edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival, where at the closing gala, “The Rye Horn” the second feature from Spanish director Jaione Camborda has just been handed the Golden Shell, the festival’s top award. It is perhaps a surprising win, but does now mark the fourth consecutive year that the festival’s most prestigious prize has gone to a female director. But in another way it has to be a first: the international jury, comprising French director Claire Denis, alongside Chinese actor and producer Fan Bingbing, Colombian producer-director Cristina Gallego, French photographer Brigitte Lacombe, Spanish actor Vicky Luengo, Canadian producer and distributor Robert Lantos and German director Christian Petzold, has chosen to award not just a Spanish film, but one from a director who was born right here in San Sebastián.

Liza Foreman SAN SEBASTIAN — Legendary Spanish writer-director Victor Erice received a standing ovation from a packed press conference on Friday, ahead of receiving the festival’s Donostia Award tonight. The award ceremony for San Sebastian’s accolade for career achievement follows on from the San Sebastian screening this morning of his first feature film in 30 years, “Close Your Eyes,” which, already pre-sold to France’s Haut et Court, world premiered in Cannes Premiere in May with the Basque director notably absent. “Close Your Eyes” sparked highly positive reviews.

Plan B Entertainment partners Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner play their cards close to their chests when it comes to strategy and upcoming plans.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Italy’s Roberto Stabile, head of special projects, Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual-Ministry of Culture at Cinecittà, breezed through the San Sebastian Film Festival on Tuesday to tout Italy’s drive to amp up the distribution of Italian movies around the world. In a brief presentation at the city’s Museo de San Telmo, he held forth about the plan to increase the presence of Italian audiovisual content not only in cinemas, but also on streaming platforms, online distribution and television, among others.

the end of the Writers Guild of America’s 148 day strike. That set the tone of proceedings at the two-day confab and maybe added a slightly larger sense of forward momentum to the central issue at stake: a State of the Union take on the challenges and opportunities for the U.S and global film industry, from a market and producers’ perspective. Multiple audience members, many from Spain and Europe, commented on their delight at the caliber of panelists and attendees, many at the top of their game.

Jessica Chastain is making a glamorous arrival at the 2023 San Sebastian Film Festival.

Holly Jones As it plays in competition at San Sebastian’s Works In Progress Latam strand, Buenos Aires-based sales agency Meikincine has swooped on international sales rights for mother-daughter relationship drama “Maybe It’s True What They Say About Us” (“Quizás Es Cierto Lo Que Dicen De Nosotras”). Produced by Storyboard Media (“Santiago, Italia” “El pacto de Fuga”), the film is directed by Chilean filmmaking duo Camilo Becerra (“El último sacramento”) and Sofía Paloma Gómez (“Quiero morirme dentro de un tiburón”).

Goodfellas President Vincent Maraval shared the secret behind his undying enthusiasm for the film industry in the face of numerous challenges in an industry panel at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Isabel Coixet recounts that she vowed to never to do another literary adaptation after her 2017 English-language feature The Bookshop based on Penelope Fitzgerald’s critically acclaimed 1978 novel of the same name.

Amblin Partners Production of President Jeb Brody welcomed the tentative writers’ strike deal during an industry panel at the San Sebastian Film Festival on Tuesday but warned that some of the issues that sparked the industrial action in the first place were still swashing around.  

Holly Jones Frenetic and high-flying ‘90s rock emblem Mauricio Aznar trades his position as enigmatic frontman of Zaragoza’s Más Birras for a journey towards the soul of his craft in Spanish writer-director Javier Macipe’s highly-anticipated second feature, “The Blue Star” (“La Estrella Azul”) saw its world premiere in the New Directors strand of the San Sebastian Film Festival on Monday. Macipe’s (“Los inconvenientes de no ser dios”) short efforts, 2014 release “Children of the River” and 2019’s “Gastos incluídos,” earned Spanish Academy Goya nominations, placing him among Variety’s 10 Spanish talents to track in 2021.

Holly Jones Incendiary Spanish director Isabel Coixet (“The Secret Life of Words”) heads to San Sebastian for the international premiere of her latest drama “Un Amor,” a take on devouring love starring Laia Costa (“Lullaby”) and Hovik Keuchkerian (“Money Heist”) that sets Coixet up to compete on the festival’s main stage for the first time. “Un Amor” is produced by Buenapinta Media’s Marisa Fernández Armenteros (“The Mole Agent”) alongside “Society of the Snow” producers Sandra Hermida and Belén Atienza, here producing out of Perdición Films. World sales are handled by Film Constellation (“Return to Reason”).

Anna Marie de la Fuente Not long after the Miami episode of Netflix’s hit show “’Street Food: USA” dropped, its Emmy-nominated director Mariano Carranza received an Instagram message. It was from Gastón Acurio, Peru’s preeminent chef-restaurateur of Astrid & Gastón fame, but Carranza thought it was a prank.

Callum McLennan Latido Films is venturing yet more into the inspiring world of e-sports and viral fame with Goya Award winning producer-helmer Alvaro Longoria’s new doc-feature, “La vida de Brianeitor.” The film serves as a spin-off from Javier Fesser’s Spanish box office smash hit, “Championext,” which Latido is also selling. The doc follows Brian Albacete, better known as Brianeitor2022. With millions of social media followers, an acting role in a top-charting Spanish film “Championext” and a spot on Team Heretics—one of Spain’s leading e-sport entities—Brian is redefining what it means to be a star.

Noah Pritzker’s bittersweet father and sons tale Ex-Husbands (aka Men Of Divorce) world premieres in Competition at the San Sebastian Film Festival on Sunday as one of the few U.S. productions to be accompanied by its cast this year thanks to its SAG-AFTRA interim agreement.

Emiliano De Pablos “A Hunt for Hedgehogs,” the new film by Hungarian director Mihály Schwechtje and “Rock Bottom,” the feature debut of Spaniard María Trénor mark two potential highlights of San Sebastian’s pix-in-post sidebar WIP Europa, that runs Sept 25-27. In 2020, the San Sebastian Film Festival, the highest-profile film event in the Spanish-speaking world, launched two new pix-in-post showcases, WIP Latam and WIP Europa, replacing respectively Films in Progress and Glocal in Progress sidebars.

LatAmCinema.com. Yet genre surfaces in disparate ways: the mix of coming of age, apocalypse and fantasy in “Mi Bestia”; the true-life horror of “Maybe It’s True What They Say About Us”; the sense of surreal in Colombia’s “Jungle.” As LatAmCinema.com notes, multiple titles are co-productions, a fact martín hazards, could be for the reduction in moneys from Argentina’s INCAA film institute, with Argentine titles dominating in the selection. This year, of the total six films at WIP Latam, four come from Argentina, one from Chile and one from Colombia.