SAN SEBASTIAN FESTIVAL OPENS WITH WORLD PREMIÈRE OF WOODY ALLEN’S ‘MELINDA AND MELINDA’

The world première of “Melinda and Melinda”, Woody Allen’s latest film, opens the 52nd Donostia-San Sebastián International Film Festival on September 17th 2004.

Woody Allen will also be present to receive the Festival’s tribute. A tribute that acknowledges fundamental figures of modern cinema.

The Festival has also programmed a retrospective of Allen’s work as a writer, director and actor, spanning his career from when he began in 1966 to his latest film MELINDA AND MELINDA.

The film, MELINDA AND MELINDA, combines romantic comedy and drama in a way that Woody Allen, unique among filmmakers, likes to contrast. It takes place in Manhattan and chronicles a pair of crises that give great rein to the funny and serious talents of Radha Mitchell, Will Ferrell, Jonny Lee Miller,Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor Chloë Sevigny and Wallace Shawn. All the usual Allen areas are explored - the fragility of love, marital infidelity, sophisticated romance, the inability to communicate. As a character in the movie puts it, "He's despondent, he's desperate, he's suicidal. All the comic elements are in place."

Woody Allen, who is currently filming in London, said today; “The Spanish people have always been very supportive of my films and its a great honour for me to come to the film festival in San Sebastian. My family and I loved the city the last time we were there and we expect to have a wonderful time”

The director of the San Sebastian Film Festival, Mikel Olaciregui
said: “It is, indeed a great honour for us, a dream come true, to première MELINDA AND MELINDA at our opening, and with the presence of Woody Allen himself, no doubt one of the greatest film directors ever”