The new image for the 58th San Sebastian Festival was unveiled at an event in the city’s Science Kutxaespacio Museum. For the fourth year running, Oscar Mariné has set the lines of the graphic design for the edition. On this occasion, a special spirit invites us to discover with resolve, inquisitiveness and defiance the contents of the Festival’s 58th edition.

The 58th Festival will run for nine days, from Friday 17 to Saturday 25 September. As usual, the three competitive sections: the Official Selection, Zabaltegi and Horizontes  Latinos, will constitute the backbone of the event.

In the Official Selection, some 15 movies will compete for the Golden Shell and other awards on the official prize list.

Zabaltegi-New Directors will showcase first or second films by emerging directors, who will compete for the Kutxa-New Directors Award with its EUR 90,000. Zabaltegi-Pearls will bring a selection of films promoted or to have garnered awards at other big festivals, which will compete for the TCM Audience Award, carrying EUR 70,000. A second prize of EUR 35,000 will go to the European film obtaining most votes in this section. 

The films selected for Horizontes Latinos, giving an overview of the season’s best Latin American production, will compete for the Horizontes Award with its EUR 35,000. 

The programme will be rounded off with initiatives including Made in Spain, the Basque Film Showcase, Films in Progress, Cinema in Motion and the Film School Meeting. 

The 58th edition will offer two retrospectives, one dedicated to Don Siegel, a member of the so-called generation of violence, alongside Richard Brooks, theme of a cycle at last year’s Festival, and the second to contemporary non-fiction cinema, entitled .doc – New paths of non-fiction.  

Don Siegel (Chicago, 1912-Nipomo, California, 1991)
Continuing with last year’s historic thread, at one of the most fertile periods in the USA movie world, this year the Festival will dedicate a complete retrospective to Siegel, a moviemaker who shone equally in fantasy B-series movies with emblematic titles like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) as he did in the different action genres.

He started working with the montage department at Warner Bros, making small productions from 1946 onwards and going on to become one of the most important directors of his generation by the mid-60s. His association with Clint Eastwood also deserves special mention, not only as the former’s acknowledged master, but also as the figure behind the best moment in his career as an actor, with two excellent examples: The Beguiled (1971) and Dirty Harry (1971).

Although he was happy working in Hollywood, Siegel was, in his own way, an independent. He adapted to TV – directing two episodes of the mythical The Twilight Zone – taking to his field greatly varying assignments and directing big-name actors including Eastwood, John Cassavetes, Lee Marvin, Richard Widmark and John Wayne. He even directed Elvis Presley in his best film as an actor, the western Flaming Star (1960).

.doc – New paths of non-fiction

The 58th San Sebastian Festival will dedicate an extensive retrospective to contemporary non-fiction cinema, christened with the title of .doc. Reflecting on the growing importance of the documentary genre throughout the world movie scene in recent years, the cycle will include some of the most representative examples of non-fiction cinema: auto-documentaries on individual and private subjects, essay cinema, fake documentaries, contributions from video-artists and moviemakers, updated variations on cinéma vérité or music documentaries....

The titles featuring in the retrospective include works by reputed directors the world over: My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007), The five Obstructions (Lars von Trier y Jorgen Leth, 2003), Le souvenir d'un avenir (Chris Marker and Yannick Bellon, 2001), Auge/Maschine-Parts 1, 2, 3  (Harun Farocki, 2002), Los rubios (Albertina Carri, 2003), Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (John Gianvito, 2007), Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2000) or The Wild Blue Yonder (Werner Herzog, 2005), to name but a few.

The main aim of .doc - New paths of non-fiction is to draw attention to this field largely unexplored as yet: non-fiction, a field where commitment to reality is no impediment to formal reflection on the audiovisual medium. At the end of the day prompting spectators not only to question themselves on the reality around us, but also on the possibilities offered by the camera for talking about the subject.