The latest features from Maite Alberdi, Edward Berger, Gia Coppola, Costa-Gavras, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Mike Leigh, Diego Lerman, Joshua Oppenheimer and François Ozon will compete for the Golden Shell alongside the debuts from Laura Carreira and Xin Huo, also included in the Official Selection of San Sebastian Festival’s 72nd edition, to run from 20-28 September.

Maite Alberdi (Santiago de Chile, 1983) will make her first time bid for the Golden Shell with her directorial debut in full length movies, El lugar de la otra, adaptation of one of the cases featuring in Alia Trabucco Zerán’s essay Las homicidas (Women Who Kill). Alberdi tells the true story of the writer María Carolina Geel, who shot her lover dead in 1955. The Chilean filmmaker, who sat on the official jury in 2021, has shown a series of non-fictions in Perlak such as El agente topo / The Mole Agent (2020), selected for the Festival’s Co-Production Forum, subsequently premiered at Sundance, winner of the City of Donostia / San Sebastian Audience Award for Best European Film and an Academy Award nominee, and La memoria infinita / The Eternal Memory (2023), winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in the World Cinema Documentary Competition and also nominated for an Oscar.

On Falling, portraying the precarious life of a Portuguese warehouse worker in Scotland, is the feature directorial debut from Laura Carreira (Porto, 1994). Worthy of note in previous works by the moviemaker living in Edinburgh are the short films Red Hill (2018), winner of the New Visions Award at the Edinburgh Festival and nominee for the BAFTA Scotland Awards, and The Shift (2020), premiered at the Venice Festival and nominated for the European Film Awards and the London Critics’ Circle Film Awards.

Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dave Bautista star in The Last Showgirl, new feature film by Gia Coppola (Los Angeles, 1987), who directed Palo Alto (2013) and Mainstream (2020), both screened at the Venice Mostra. Her latest movie portrays a seasoned showgirl who must plan for her future when her show closes after a 30-year run.

Honoured with the Donostia Award in 2019, the year that saw the screening of Adults in the Room, the French-Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras (Loutra-Iraias, 1933) returns to the Official Selection at which he presented Le capital (Capital, 2012). His latest work, Le dernier souffle / Last Breath, reflecting on the life of a doctor specialising in palliative care and a writer, comes with a cast including Denis Podalydès, Kad Merad, Marilyne Canto, Ángela Molina, Charlotte Rampling, Hiam Abbass, Karin Viard and Agathe Bonitzer. Costa-Gavras boasts a long and committed body of work particularly including Z (1969), winner of the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Editing as well as the Special Jury Prize at Cannes; Missing (1981), Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Music Box (1989), Golden Bear in Berlin. 

Edward Berger (Wolfsburg, 1970), whose previous movie, Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front, 2022), earned several Academy Awards, including Best International Feature Film, will compete with Conclave. Here Ralph Fiennes plays a cardinal who is tasked following the Pope’s sudden death with supervising the conclave from which his successor will be chosen. The German filmmaker, who also directs Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini in the movie, showed Jack (2014) and All My Loving (2019) in the official competition of the Berlinale and its Panorama section, respectively.

Having written the screenplay for titles including Shower (1999), Kung Fu Hustle (2004), Curiosity Kills the Cat (2006) and The Monkey King (2014), Xin Huo (Beijing, 1980) makes her debut behind the camera with Bound in Heaven. The Chinese director tells the tale of a terminally ill man and a young girl trapped by violence as they set out on a race against the clock through different cities.

The competition will also include the screening of Hebi no michi / Serpent’s Path, a movie from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Kobe, 1955) about a man hell bent on revenge for his daughter’s brutal murder. Shot in French and starring Ko Shibasaki, Damien Bonnard and Mathieu Amalric, Kurosawa brings a new version of the homonymous movie he himself helmed in 1998 and which was programmed ten years later as part of San Sebastian Festival’s themed retrospective Japan in Black. Outstanding in the career of the prolific Japanese author are works such as Akarui mirai / Bright Future (2003), included in 2015 in the New  Japanese Independent Cinema season; Tokyo Sonata (Zabaltegi-Pearls, 2008), Jury Prize winner at Un Certain Regard in Cannes; the miniseries Shokuzai / Penance (Zabaltegi-Specials, 2012), and Wife of a Spy (Perlak, 2020), winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Mostra.

Also featuring in the Official Selection for the first time is Britain’s Mike Leigh (Salford, 1943), who brought to Perlak the film earning him the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Secrets and Lies (1996), as well as titles such as Naked (1993), Best Director winner at the French festival; All or Nothing (2002); Vera Drake (2004), winner of the Golden Lion in Venice, and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). In the British-Spanish production Hard Truths, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin, Leigh portrays the everyday life of a London family, addressing such issues as family relations, mourning and mental health.

Diego Lerman (Buenos Aires, 1976) returns to the competition for the third time with El hombre que amaba los platos voladores, a film about Argentinian television’s best known audiovisual recording on the existence of alien presence. Particularly worthy of note in the cast are Leonardo Sbaraglia, Sergio Prina, Osmar Núñez and Renata Lerman, winner of the Silver Shell for Best Supporting Actor in El suplente / The Substitute (2022), the other feature film presented by Lerman in the Official Selection together with Una especie de familia / A Sort of Family (2017), winner of the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay. Some of his previous works, such as La mirada invisible / The Invisible Eye (2010) and Refugiado (2014) premiered in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes prior to programming in Horizontes Latinos.  

The Official Selection will also show The End, the first inroads to fiction films by Joshua Oppenheimer (Austin, Texas, 1974). Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay, Bronagh Gallagher and Tim McInnerny shine in the cast of this dystopian musical following a wealthy family who survive in a bunker two decades after the world has ended. Outstanding among Oppenheimer’s earlier works are his rendering of the Indonesian genocide in The Act of Killing (2012), premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlinale and winner of the Bafta for Best Documentary, and The Look of Silence (2014), winner of the Grand Jury and FIPRESCI Prizes at the Venice Mostra. Both films competed for the Best Documentary Academy Award and featured in the themed retrospective precisely given the title by the San Sebastian Festival of The Act of Killing. Cinema and global violence.  

In Quand vient l'automne / When Fall Is Coming, starring Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko, Ludivine Sagnier and Pierre Lottin, François Ozon (Paris, 1967) tells the tale of a retired woman whose life changes on meeting a man, her friend’s son, recently released from prison. This will be the French moviemaker’s sixth participation in the Official Selection, where he won the Golden Shell and Jury Prize for Best Screenplay with Dans la maison / In The House (2012) and the Special Jury Prize with Le refuge (2009), as well as presenting Sous le sable / Under the Sand (2000), Une nouvelle amie / The New Girlfriend (2014) and Été 85 / Summer of 85 (2020). Several of Ozon’s movies have also participated in Perlak, including 8 femmes (8 Women, 2002),  Jeune et jolie (Young and Beautiful, 2013), Frantz (2016) and Peter von Kant (2022).

These titles join Emmanuelle, the movie from Audrey Diwan to open the Official Selection competition, and the films with Spanish production also recently announced: Soy Nevenka / I’m Nevenka, from Iciar Bollain; El llanto/ The Wailing, from Pedro Martín-Calero; Los destellos / Glimmers, from Pilar Palomero, and Tardes de soledad, from Albert Serra.