The 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival, to take place from 20-29 September, will present a retrospective of work by the French director, Philippe Garrel.
One of the most independent figures on the French movie scene, direct descendent of the nouvelle vague, but also of Robert Bresson and Jean Eustache, Philippe Garrel has woven a career started in 1964 ranging from isolationist cinema to portraying important fragments of recent history, while reflecting on couples, drugs and the making of films.
Son of the veteran actor Maurice Garrel, brother of Thierry Garrel (an important part of "La Sept") and father of the actor Louis Garrel (who has earned tremendous popularity since his work in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers), this director has worked over the years with actresses of strongly marked characteristics including Nico, also a singer and his partner for years, Jean Seberg, Bulle Ogier, Tina Aumont, Anne Wiazemski, Emmanuelle Riva, Mireille Perrier, Anémone and Catherine Deneuve.
His films, a mixture of extreme emotions and faces, swing from the depraved rawness of La cicatrice intérieure (1970), one of the essential titles from his early period, to the biased emotion of Un ange passe (1975), L’enfant secret (1979), Les baisers de secours (1988), La naissance de l’amour (1993) –with music by John Cale— and Le vent de la nuit (1998), not forgetting Les amants réguliers (2005), winner among other awards of a Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice Festival.
The San Sebastian Festival will therefore take a look at one of contemporary French cinema's unquestionable references, the author of films inspiring some of the moviemakers marking the pace of modern cinema, like Gus Van Sant, Olivier Assayas and José Luis Guerin, and a director completely unknown to Spanish commercial cinemas.
To accompany the event, we will publish a book on his work in collaboration with the Basque Film Archive, coordinated by Quim Casas and written by various authors.
This retrospective will feature on the programme of the 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival alongside those formerly announced on the work of classic filmmaker Henry King, and on recent films from Northern Europe, entitled "Cold Fever".