San Sebastian Fest announced Perlak line-up
Perlak will include at the 74th edition of the San Sebastián Festival a total of 16 feature films, the majority of which have enjoyed recognition at the world’s leading festivals. Eleven of the selected titles have screened at Cannes, including the Palme d’Or, the ex aequo best director awards and the accolades for best male and female performance, while other films come from festivals such as Venice, Berlin and Sundance. All the films included in the section will compete for the City of Donostia / San Sebastián Audience Award, with the exception of Juste une illusion, by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, which will close Perlak out of competition.
After showing in Perlak Nelyubov / Loveless (2017), Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (Novosibirsk, 1964) will return to open the section with Minotaur, winner of the Grand Prix in Cannes. The feature film, a free adaptation of La femme infidèle / The Unfaithful Wife (Claude Chabrol, 1969), brings the portrait of a successful businessman hemmed in by mounting corporate pressure whose life is starting to crack at the seams. With his first film, Vozvrashchenie / The Return (2003), Zvyagintsev landed the Golden Lion in Venice, while at the Festival de Cannes his film Izgnanie / The Banishment (2007) bagged the Best Actor Award for Konstantin Lavronenko. Elena (2011) carried off the Special Jury Prize at Un Certain Regard in Cannes, and Leviafan / Leviathan (2014) became the first Russian film to receive a Golden Globe, as well as winning the Best Screenplay Award in Cannes and receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
Starring Louis Garrel, Camille Cottin and Pierre Lottin, Juste une illusion / Just an Illusion is the new film from Olivier Nakache (Suresnes, 1973) and Eric Toledano (Paris, 1971), scheduled to close Perlak following its successful commercial run in France. The French duo has close ties to San Sebastián, whose Official Selection they closed with the world premiere of Intouchables / Untouchable, the film that led to their international take-off in 2011. Having also closed the 2014 edition with Samba, they made their first bid for the Golden Shell with Le sens de la fête / C’est la vie (2017) and, after closing Cannes out of competition, returned to Perlak in 2019 with Hors Normes / The Specials, where they won the Audience Award for Best Film.
Having carried off the Audience Award and the Jury Grand Prize at Sundance, and having participated in the official competition at the Berlinale, North American filmmaker Beth de Araújo (San Francisco, 1985) will show her second feature in San Sebastián. Starring Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan and Mason Reeves, Josephine portrays the trauma of a young girl after she accidentally witnesses a rape.
Famous for co-directing the animated films Astérix: Le Domaine des dieux /Astérix: The Mansions of the Gods (2014), and Astérix: Le Secret de la Potion Magique / Astérix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (2018), with Alexandre Astier, French animator Louis Clichy (Chartres, 1977) brings his solo debut with Le corset / Iron Boy. After years of dedication to 3D animation at Pixar, where he worked on films including WALL-E (2008) and UP (2009), his first feature is created using traditional animation and won him the Special Jury Prize from Un Certain Regard in Cannes, as well as the Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Annecy Festival.
Actors Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne bagged the Best Actor Award ex aequo at Cannes for their roles in Coward, where they play two World War I soldiers who fall in love. The Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont (Gante, 1991) will screen his third film in San Sebastián, where he previously presented his feature debut, Girl (Perlak, 2018). Having carried off the Cámera d’Or for Best First Feature Film at Un Certain Regard in Cannes, the film won the Audience and Sebastiane Awards in San Sebastián. His next work, Close, was distinguished with the Cannes official competition’s Grand Prix, and landed an Academy Award nomination in 2022.
North American writer, producer and actor Jordan Firstman (New York, 1991) directs and stars in his feature film debut, Club Kid, alongside cast members Cara Delevingne and Diego Calva, among others. Premiered at Un Certain Regard in Cannes, the feature film tells the tale of a New York club who sees his whirlwind lifestyle upended with the arrival of a 10-year-old boy a woman he doesn’t know tells him is his son.
Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto received the Best Actress Award ex aequo in Cannes for their parts in Soudain / All of a Sudden, from the Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Kawasaki, 1978), where they embody two friends who ruminate and meander on the subject of capitalism and the answer to its lack of humanity. The film brings Hamaguchi back to the Festival, where he premiered his debut Passion (New Directors, 2008). He previously presented Asako I & II (2018) in Perlak, the section to which he returned twofold in 2021 with the winner of the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film Drive My Car (FIPRESCI Grand Prix, 2022) and Guzen to sozo / Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, and in 2023 with Evil Does Not Exist, winner of the Lurra Award.
The South Korean director Na Hong-jin (Seoul, 1974) will make his first appearance in San Sebastián with Hope, an action and fun-packed film starring two aliens played by Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander. This feature film, which was selected for the Competition at Cannes, joins the director’s other films, such as The Chaser (2008), shown in the Midnight Screenings section at Cannes; The Yellow Sea (2010), which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes; and Goksung / The Wailing (2016), shown out of competition at the French festival.
John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell and Steve Buscemi make up the cast of Wild Horse Nine, the latest film from Martin McDonagh (Camberwell, 1970). The British filmmaker won, with Six Shooter (2004), the Academy Award for Best Short Fiction and his first feature film, In Bruges (2008), received the BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay and an Academy Award nomination in the same category. With Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Perlak, 2017) he landed the Audience Award in San Sebastián, as well as the Academy Award going to Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively, and the Golden Globe for Best Film, a distinction he also won with The Banshees of Inisherin (2022).
Following its premiere at the Venice Festival, the Italian director and actor Nanni Moretti (Brunico, 1953) will present at the Festival Succederà questa notte / It Will Happen Tonight, partially filmed in San Sebastián last year. The film is loosely inspired by the short film collection Hungry Heart / Lev Raev, by the writer Eshkol Nevo, and stars Louis Garrel and Jasmine Trinca. The filmmaker has participated in Perlak with La stanza del figlio / The Son’s Room (2001), winner of the Palme d’Or in Cannes, and closed the section in 2015 with Mia Madre, which also competed at the French competition, as did Caro Diario, for which he won the Best Director Award; Abril (1998) and Habemus Papam (2011).
The Perlak section will also feature the title to have carried off the Palme d’Or for Best Film at the Festival de Cannes, as well as the Jury and FIPRESCI Prize at the same competition. In Fjord, the Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu (Lasi, 1968) directs Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a devout Romanian-Norwegian couple who settle in a village set in a remote fjord and whose traditional education methods raise suspicions among the community. The director, who won his first Palme d’Or with 4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile / 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Perlak, FIPRESCI Grand Prix, 2007), is a regular at the French festival since his first film, Occident (2002), presented at the Quinzaine des cinéastes. He later competed in its official selection with Dupa dealuri (Beyond the Hills, 2012), Best Screenplay and Best Actress awards and included in San Sebastián’s 2014 Eastern Promises retrospective, Bacalaureat (Graduation, 2016), winner of the Best Director Award, and R.M.N. (Perlak, 2022).
Tangles is the second animated film screening in Perlak, this time with the feature debut from Canadian director Leah Nelson (Vancouver, 1984), premiered in Cannes as a Special Screening. The film, coming with the voices of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Abbi Jacobson, Bryan Cranston and Seth Rogen, among others, tells the tale of a young woman who returns to the conservative Canadian town of her birth to care for her mother, suffering with Alzheimer’s. There she learns to accept her strange family and her mother’s mental deterioration.
Pawel Pawlikowski (Warsaw, 1957) returns to post-war Europe with Fatherland, a path on which he already embarked with his feature films Ida (2013), winner of an Academy Award for Best Foreign language Film, and Zimna Wojna / Cold War (Perlak, 2018), which received the Best Director Award in Cannes. His latest film, which earned him the Best Director Award ex aequo in Cannes, takes the audience to 1949 and focuses on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), actress, writer and rally driver, as the two set out on a road trip taking them through a Germany in ruins.
Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge and Luther Ford head the cast of The Man I Love, a film with which Ira Sachs (Memphis, 1965) participated in the Cannes’ official competition, following an underground artist faced with a decisive moment in the New York of the late 80s. The North American director has been selected for Sundance with his debut film, The Delta (1996); Forty Shades of Blue (2005), winner of the Grand Jury Prize; Keep the Lights On (2012); Passages (2023) and Peter Hujar’s Day (2025). Married Life (2007) which premiered at the Toronto Festival and Frankie (2019) a competitor in Cannes, while at the Berlinale he has participated in the Generation and Panorama sections with, respectively, Little Men (2016) and Love is Strange (2014), both later programmed in Perlak.
Olivia Wilde (New York, 1984) directs and stars in The Invite, a film that combines satire, situational comedy and drama to directly address the rifts and conflicts that can arise at different stages of a couple's life. Having shown the feature film at Sundance, Wilde, accompanied on the cast by Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, returns to San Sebastián, where she previously presented her second film as a director Don’t Worry Darling (Perlak, 2022). In addition, the hit film Booksmart (2019), bagged her the Independent Spirit Best First Feature Award.
These titles join La bola negra, by Javier Ambrossi (Madrid, 1984) and Javier Calvo (Madrid, 1991). The film, which was announced during the presentation of the Spanish productions programmed for the San Sebastián Festival’s 74th edition, carried off the Best Director Award ex aequo in Cannes together with Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland.
Armani Beauty, the Festival’s Official Beauty Sponsor, sponsors the Perlak section.
