María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat, Robin Campillo, Joachim Lafosse, Noah Pritzker, Cristi Puiu and Martín Rejtman will present their latest films in the Official Selection of the 71st San Sebastián Festival, which will be held from September 22nd to the 30th, 2023.

Argentinian filmmakers María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat co- direct Puan, in which Marcelo Subiotto and Leonardo Sbaraglia play two professors at odds over a university chair. Alché won the Horizontes Award with her first feature film, A Family Submerged (Familia sumergida)(2018), and this year she is also an Ikusmira Berriak program resident. For his part, Naishtat won the Silver Shell for best director with Rojo (2018), which also won the awards for best actor and best photography, and before this he took part in the Horizontes Latinos section (Historia del miedo / History of Fear, 2014).

The French filmmaker Robin Campillo will be competing at San Sebastián for the first time with the film Red Island (L’île rouge), which deals with the French colonization of Madagascar. His fourth film as a director comes after winning the Grand Prix of the Jury at Cannes with 120 Beats Per Minute (120 BPM)(2017).

American filmmaker Raven Jackson will be competing at San Sebastián with her debut film, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, a lyrical exploration of the life of a woman in Mississippi that screened this year in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance. She has a close relationship with the Festival, she took part in the Nest section, the international competition for short films by film students, with Nettles (2018) and, in the Ikusmira Berriak program she developed the film that she is presenting at the 71st Festival.

Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse will be back at the official competition with his tenth full-length film A Silence (Un silence), a drama starring Emmanuelle Devos and Daniel Auteuil. In 2015 he won the Silver Shell for Best Director for The White Knights (Les chevaliers blancs), and two of his films have been screened in the Perlak section: After Love (L’économie du couple)(2016) and The Restless (Les intranquilles)(2021).

After his debut with the film Quitters (2015), US filmmaker Noah Pritzker will present his second feature film, Ex-Husbands, which portrays the sentimental ups and downs of several men in the same family. Griffin Dunne, James Norton, Miles Heizer, Rosanna Arquette and Eisa Davis form part of the cast of the film.

Romania filmmaker Cristi Puiu will be in the official competition with MMXX, that captures the wanderings of a bunch of errant souls stuck at the crossroads of history; and Argentinian filmmaker Martín Rejtman will take part for the first time with The Practice (La práctica), a comedy starring actor Esteban Bigliardi as a yoga teacher in a marital crisis.

Films

ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT
RAVEN JACKSON (USA)
Country(ies) of production: USA
Cast: Charleen McClure, Reginald Helms, Jr., Moses Ingram, Zainab Jah, Sheila Atim, Chris Chalk
A lyrical, decades-spanning exploration across a woman’s life in Mississippi, the feature debut from award-winning poet, photographer and filmmaker Raven Jackson is a haunting and richly layered portrait, a beautiful ode to the generations of people and places that shape us.

EX-HUSBANDS
NOAH PRITZKER (USA)
Country(ies) of production: USA
Cast: Griffin Dunne, James Norton, Miles Heizer, Rosanna Arquette, Eisa Davis
Peter’s parents divorced after 65 years, his wife left him after 35, and his sons, Nick and Mickey, are off leading their own lives. When Peter flies to Tulum, crashing Nick’s bachelor party hosted by Mickey, he realizes he’s not the only one in crisis.

LA PRÁCTICA / THE PRACTICE
MARTÍN REJTMAN (ARGENTINA)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina – Chile – Portugal
Cast: Esteban Bigliardi, Mirta Busnelli, Manuela Oyarzún, Camila Hirane, Gabriel Cañas
Gustavo and Vanessa separate and have to revise their projects together. Both are yoga teachers. Gustavo is Argentinian, Vanessa is Chilean. The trip to India is cancelled.Vanessa takes the apartment and leaves the studio they shared, leaving Gustavo homeless. As a result of the accumulated stress, Gustavo injures his knee and replaces yoga: first with quadriceps exercises and then with the gym. But gradually he gets his life back on track and starts practising again.

L’ÎLE ROUGE / RED ISLAND
ROBIN CAMPILLO (MOROCCO)
Country(ies) of production: France – Belgium
Cast: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutiérrez
L’île rouge / The Red Island is set in Madagascar in the early 1970s, on one of the last air bases of the French army, where military families live the last throes of colonialism. Influenced by his reading of the intrepid comic book heroine Fantômette, ten-year-old Thomas sweeps with a curious glance what surrounds him, while the world gradually opens up to a different reality.

MMXX
CRISTI PUIU (ROMANIA)
Country(ies) of production: Romania
Cast: Bianca Cuculici, Laurențiu Bondarenco, Otilia Panaite, Florin Țibre, Igor Babiac, Roxana Ogrendil, Adelaida Perjoiu, Dorian Boguță, Dragoș Bucur, Marin Cumatrenco
Oana Pfifer, a young therapist, gradually slips into the net of the questionnaire she submits to her patient. Mihai, Oana’s brother, worrying about his birthday, is stuck in a story far bigger than what he can handle. Septimiu, Oana’s husband, concerned about his health, vaguely listens to a strange story his colleague was caught in a while ago. Narcis Patranescu, an organized crime detective, deals with an unsettling dark story while interrogating a young woman at a funeral.

PUAN
MARÍA ALCHÉ (ARGENTINA), BENJAMÍN NAISHTAT (ARGENTINA)
Country(ies) of production: Argentina – Italy – Germany – France -Brazil
Cast: Marcelo Subiotto, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Julieta Zylberberg, Alejandra Flechner, Mara Bestelli, Andrea Frigerio
Marcelo has devoted his life to teaching at the Faculty of Philosophy. When Professor Caselli, his mentor, dies unexpectedly, Marcelo expects to inherit the Department´s kingdom. However his plans turn upside down with the unexpected arrival of Rafael Sujarchuk, a charismatic and seductive colleague, whom returns from his pedestal in European universities to claim the philosophy Department for himself. Marcelo’s clumsy efforts to prove that he is the right candidate will trigger a hilarious philosophical duel, while his life -and the country- enter a spiral of chaos.

UN SILENCE / A SILENCE
JOACHIM LAFOSSE (BELGIUM)
Country(ies) of production: Belgium – France – Luxembourg
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Devos, Matthieu Galoux, Salomé Dewaels, Jeanne Cherhal
Astrid is the wife of an acclaimed lawyer. Silenced for 25 years, her family balance suddenly collapses when her children initiate their search for justice.