Penélope Cruz will receive the Donostia Award, along with the screening of her latest film, Wasp Network, directed by Olivier Assayas, at the San Sebastian Festival 2019.
“I receive the news of this Donostia Award full of emotion and gratitude to the San Sebastián Festival for granting me this immense honor. San Sebastian is not only an internationally renowned Festival but also the most important in our country and a very special place to me because I have had the pleasure of visiting it since I was very young and have lived very touching moments there. Thank you very much, from the bottom of my heart”
.Penélope Cruz
Wasp Network, which will have its world premiere at the coming Venice Festival, is a co-production between France, Brazil, Spain and Belgium. Together with Penélope Cruz, other actors in the cast are Edgar Ramírez, Gael García Bernal, Wagner Moura, Ana de Armas and Leonardo Sbaraglia, among other actors. The film focusses on the members of a Cuban spy ring taken prisoner in the USA in the late 90s, accused of espionage and murder.
Olivier Assayas (Paris, 1955) presented Désordre (Disorder, 1986), his feature film debut, in New Directors. Since then, Assayas, who won the best director award in Cannes for Personal Shopper (2016), has participated in several of San Sebastian’s sections with titles such as Fin août, debut septembre (Late August, Early September, 1998, Official Selection); Quartier des Enfants Rouges, his segment for the omnibus feature film Paris, je t’aime (Perlak, 2006); L’heure d’été (Summer Hours, 2008, Perlak); Clean (2004), which participated in 2009 in the retrospective: Backwash: the cutting edge of French cinema, and Après Mai (After May, 2012, Perlak), winner of the best screenplay award at the Venice Festival.
WASP NETWORK
OLIVIER ASSAYAS (BRAZIL – FRANCE – SPAIN – BELGIUM)
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Edgar Ramírez, Gael García Bernal, Wagner Moura, Ana de Armas, Leonardo Sbaraglia
Havana, in the early 90s. René González, a Cuban pilot, steals a plane and flees Cuba, leaving his beloved wife and daughter behind. He starts a new life in Miami. Other Cuban deserters soon follow him and they institute a spy ring. Their mission is to infiltrate the violent anti-Castro organisations responsible for terrorist attacks on the island.