San Sebastián (EFE).- Three directors awarded at the San Sebastián Festival, the Belgian Joachim Lafosse and the Argentines María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat, will compete for the Golden Shell in the 71st edition of the contest. The Romanian Cristi Puiu and another Argentine, Martin Rejtman, who is making his debut in the Official Section, will also do so, as will the French Robin Campillo.
These names are part of the first advance that Zinemaldia offers about its next edition. It will be held from September 22 to 30 and will also feature the Americans Noah Pritzker, who is presenting his second feature film, “Ex-Husbands”, and Raven Jackson, who is presenting his debut feature, “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” in competition. .
Naishtat returns to competition at the San Sebastian Festival
María Alché (Buenos Aires, 1983) and Benjamín Naishtat (Buenos Aires, 1986) have allied themselves in the direction of “Puan”. In this film Marcelo Subiotto and Leonardo Sbaraglia play two professors facing each other over a university chair. Their dispute will trigger “a fun philosophical duel, while his life and the country enter a spiral of chaos,” the Festival explains in a note.
Naishtat won the Silver Shell for Best Director in 2018 with “Rojo”. Four years earlier, she had participated in the Horizontes Latinos section with “Historia del miedo”.
An award-winning co-director
In this last section, Alché competed five years ago with his first feature film, “Submerged Family”. He won the highest award, the Horizontes Award.
Alché is also a resident of this year’s Ikusmira Berriak program, promoted by Zinemaldia, Tabakalera and Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola.
In these residences, Raven Jackson (Tennessee, 1990) worked on the project that is now in the Official Section. It is a lyrical exploration of the life of a woman in Mississippi that premiered this year in the US Dramatic Competition section at Sundance.
European cinema presence
Another name from the Official Section known this Friday is that of Cristi Puiu (Bucharest, 1967). He is the author of “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005), considered a “capital work” of the new wave of Romanian cinema. The Zinemaldia included it in 2014 in the retrospective “Eastern Promises. Portrait of Eastern Europe in 50 films”.
Puiu, who has gone through the Cannes and Karlovy Vary festivals and who went to Perlak in 2016 with “Sieranevada”, is competing in this 71st edition with “MMXX”. this new title “follows the adventures of a handful of wandering souls trapped at the crossroads of history.”
Joachim Lafosse (Uccle, Belgium. 1975) returns to the official competition with his tenth feature film, “Un silence”, a drama starring Emmanuelle Devos and Daniel Auteuil.
This filmmaker won the Silver Shell for Best Director for “The White Knights” in 2015. In addition, two of his works have gone through Perlak: “After Us” (2016) and “A Restless Love” (2021).
For his part, Robin Campillo (Mohammédia, Morocco, 1962) will compete for the first time in San Sebastián with “La isla roja”, whose setting is the French colonization of Madagascar.
This is his fourth work as a director and comes after winning the Cannes Grand Jury Prize with “120 beats per minute”, screened at Perlak at the San Sebastian Festival in 2017.
In 2009, his first work behind the camera, “The Resurrection of the Dead”, from 2004, was included in the retrospective “La contraola: novísimo cine francés” and in 2012 he entered the Official Selection as co-writer of “Foxfire”, by Laurent Cantet.
Martín Rejtman (Buenos Aires, 1961) will present “La práctica”, a comedy in which the actor Esteban Bigliardi plays a yoga teacher immersed in a marital crisis.
First time in the Official Section from America
Although it is his first time in the Official Section, several of his previous films have passed through San Sebastián, such as “Silvia Prieto” (1999), which was screened in the Made in Spanish section, and “Los guantes mágicos” (2004) and “Two shots”, which were in Horizontes Latinos.
And finally, Noah Pritzker (San Francisco, 1986), who made his debut in 2015 with “Quitters”, visits San Sebastián for the first time to present “Ex-Husbands”, which portrays the sentimental ups and downs of several men from the same family and in whose cast includes Griffin Dunne, James Norton, Miles Heizer, Rosanna Arquette and Eisa Davis.
The entry Joachim Lafosse, Benjamín Naishtat and Cristi Puiu, in competition at the San Sebastián Festival was first published in EFE Noticias.