‘Lumière!, l’aventure continue’ by Thierry Frémaux will be a Special Screening and Piet Baumgartner and Sylvia join the New Directors
The film ‘Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness’, directed by Johnny Depp, will participate out of competition in the Official Section of the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival, which will be held from September 20 to 28.
In addition, Thierry Frémaux’s film ‘Lumière!, l’aventure continue’ will be included in the Special Screenings section, while Piet Baumgartner’s second feature film and Sylvia Le Fanu’s debut will complete the New Directors section.
In a statement, the organisers of the San Sebastian festival have reported that the Official Section of the 72nd edition of the Zinemaldia will include the out-of-competition participation of ‘Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness’, the second feature film as a director by Johnny Depp, who made his debut behind the camera with ‘The Brave’ (1997) and in 2021 was honoured with the Donostia Award for his entire career in the capital of Guipuzcoa.
In this film, Riccardo Scamarcio plays the bohemian artist Amedeo Modigliani, leading a cast that includes Stephen Graham, Al Pacino and Antonia Desplat, among others. The film tells a story of art, love and rejection centered on 72 intense hours of frenetic events in the streets and bars of Paris torn apart by the Great War.
For his part, Thierry Frémaux (Tullins, 1960), general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival and director of the Lumière Institute, will return to San Sebastian to present ‘Lumière!, l’aventure continue’ (‘Lumière! The adventure continues’), the sequel to ‘Lumière! L’aventure commence’ (‘Lumière! The adventure begins’, 2016), a journey through the universe of the founders of cinema. The screening of this film, which was programmed at the Festival in 2017, was the starting point of the Klasikoak section.
As already announced, the Official Section will also feature the series ‘Querer’, directed by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, out of competition, and the Special Screenings will include the feature film ‘La virgen roja/ The Red Virgin’, by Paula Ortiz, and the series ‘Yo, borracho/ I, Addict’, directed by Javier Giner and Elena Trapé.
NEW DIRECTORS
On the other hand, the New Directors section will include twelve titles. Swiss director Piet Baumgartner (Dieterswil, 1984), who directed the short films ‘Alle Werden’ (2011), presented at Locarno, ‘Elite’ (2013) and ‘Inland’ (2015), and in 2023 made his feature film debut with the documentary ‘The Driven Ones’, presented at the Zurich Festival, will present ‘Bagger’, a drama that tells the story of a family whose stability falls apart when their daughter dies in an accident.
Sylvia Le Fanu (London, 1990), a Danish director with British roots, makes her feature film debut with the Danish production ‘Min Evige Sommer/ My Eternal Summer’, about a 15-year-old girl forced to spend the summer trying to say goodbye to her terminally ill mother whose last wish is to be together in their summer house. Le Fanu has presented short films at festivals such as Clermont-Ferrand, Indy Shorts and Odense, among others.
These two titles are added to the ten previously announced, such as ‘La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés’, the debut of Antón Álvarez (C. Tangana), which will open the New Directors section, and ‘Hiver à Sokcho/ Winter in Sokcho’ (‘Winter in Sokcho’), by Koya Kamura, which will close it.
Also screening will be ‘Azken erromantikoak’ (‘The Last Romantics’) by David Pérez Sañudo; ‘Brûle le sang/ In the Name of Blood’ by Akaki Popkhadze; ‘Gülizar/ Gulizar’ by Belkis Bayrak; ‘La ingreso del hijo / The Arrival of the Son’ by Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato; ‘Por donde pasa el silencio/ Where The Silence Passes’ by Sandra Romero; Regretfully at Dawn by Sivaroj Kongsakul; ‘Stars and the Moon’ by Yongkang Tang; and ‘Turn Me On’ by Michael Tyburski.
These twelve feature films will compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award, worth 50,000 euros, in a competition that includes the participation of thirteen filmmakers from Argentina, China, Spain, the United States, France, Georgia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Turkey.