San Sebastian Film Festival 2023 Complete Winners List: Jaione Camborda’s ‘The Rye Horn’ Takes Golden Shell For Best Film

The Wrestler, directed by Bangladeshi-Canadian filmmaker Iqbal H. Chowdhury, and September 1923, from Japan’s Tatsuya Mori, picked up the New Currents Awards as Busan International Film Festival wrapped a busy 28th edition on October 13. 

EXCLUSIVE: The Bureau creator Eric Rochant is today formally unveiling his production banner, Maui Entertainment, which has quietly launched with backing from Federation Studios.

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.

Caroline Brew editor The Savannah College of Art and Design’s 26th annual SCAD Savannah Film Festival, which will run from Oct. 21-28, has announced its film lineup. “Nyad,” a film based on the life of world-class athlete Diana Nyad, will open the festival on Oct.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival is back after a one-year hiatus with a rich mix of Arabic and international titles launching into the Middle East and plenty of promising projects from Arab countries set to be unveiled to prospective partners at its CineGouna industry side. The event launched in 2017 by Egyptian telecom billionaire Naguib Sawiris – whose brother Samih built the El Gouna resort in a swathe of desert near the tourist town of Hurghada 250 miles south of Cairo – was put on pause in 2022 ostensibly due to the country’s economic crisis following five editions during which fest co-founder Amr Mansi and chief Intishal Al Timimi had managed to rapidly put El Gouna on the international festival map while also making it a favourite with the local crowd.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Gael Garcia Bernal is set to preside over the jury of the upcoming Rome Film Festival. The Mexican actor, director and producer will be judging entries and bestowing prizes in the rebooted fest’s main section, which is now known as Progressive Cinema. Films competing for Rome prizes include Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s “Un Amor,” about a young woman socially and sexually exploited by a rural patriarchy; Iranian director Farhad Delaram, in which a former filmmaker turned medic decides to help a female political prisoner escape from a psych ward; and French director Mehdi Fikri’s “After The Fire,” which turns on a French woman of North African descent who seeks justice after her younger brother dies suspiciously after being stopped by the police.

The Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival, running from October 18 to 24 in the Spanish island’s capital of Palma, has unveiled its full line-up.

Jessica Chastain is being honored!

Addie Morfoot Contributor Madeleine Gavin’s Sundance award-winning documentary “Beyond Utopia” has garnered the best documentary and best doc editing honors at the 24th annual Woodstock Film Festival. The documentary, which was recently acquired by Roadside Attractions, is vying for Academy Award attention.

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.

Country’s biggest stars gathered in Nashville Thursday night to kick off the first-ever People’s Choice Country Awards.

The first-ever People’s Choice Country Awards just aired on TV and we have the full list of winners right here.

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.

Jessica Chastain is making a glamorous arrival at the 2023 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.  

Callum McLennan At this year’s Annecy, the most important animation festival in the world, Basque animations were out in force. With a diverse showcase ranging from the nostalgic cartoon charm of “Conej Steps Out” by student outfit Funnie Fantasies, to UniKo’s tantalising taster excerpts for feminist story “Sultana’s Dream” by Isabel Herguera and the short “Body of Christ” by Beatriz Lumez, Basque animators made a mark. The festival’s spotlight on Spanish female creators further underscored this region’s depth of talent.

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”).

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.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Spain’s 71st San Sebastian Film Festival is tracking to welcome an even larger industry presence than 2022, currently up 10% in attendance on 2022’s already bullish figures, its status as the biggest movie event in the Spanish-speaking world remaining undiminished. Here are 10 key takes on potential highlights and trends which look likely to shape this year’s edition, running Sept.