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Festival coverage

San Sebastian Film Festival

22 September – 30 September 2023

San Sebastian Film Festival will run from September 22 to 30. The programme has begun to be announced, so check back regularly for updates.

Other years (17)

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Latest reviews

  • A Journey In Spring
    Review preview for A Journey In Spring

    A Journey In Spring is one of the most impressive contributions to date in the new Taiwanese cinema.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    An old man has depended on his wife over the years, when she suddenly passes away, he puts her into an old freezer and goes on living a seemingly peaceful life. But the arrival of his son and daughter-in-law brings change.
  • Close Your Eyes
    Review preview for Close Your Eyes

    A meditation on both memory and movies as well as ageing and a hankering for the past that is informed by the melancholic knowledge that nostalgia is inevitably rose-tinted.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    A TV show looking into the mysterious disappearance of an actor leads a director on a journey into his own past while making discoveries in the present.
  • Orlando, My Political Biography
    Review preview for Orlando, My Political Biography

    Capturing the experience of living in a world where one’s gender doesn’t fit better than almost any other film to date, Preciado’s work is all about claiming space and present day narrative.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Docufiction interpretation of Virginia Woolf's novel.
  • Evil Does Not Exist
    Review preview for Evil Does Not Exist

    Hamaguchi isn’t scared to completely change the rhythm of his film on a dime, something that is likely to frustrate as many people as it delights.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    A rural village faces disruption from the construction of a glamping site for Tokyo tourists.
  • Io Capitano
    Review preview for Io Capitano

    First-timer Sarr - who is a musician - is a remarkable lead and matched by the support from fellow novice Fall.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    Two Senegalese teenagers try to realise their dream of a new life in Europe.
  • Red Island
    Review preview for Red Island

    Patriarchal and paternalistic structures at both a family and country level are put in the spotlight.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    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.
  • Monster
    Review preview for Monster

    A beautifully constructed piece of work in which every detail serves the whole, putting the tools of the epic at the disposal of a story which is intimate and delicately realised.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A mother is shocked when she learns what a teacher has said to her son, but the truth is more complicated.
  • The Promised Land
    Review preview for The Promised Land

    There is a redemption arc here, but it’s not the whole of the story, and Arcel uses it to highlight the deep inequities so normalised at the time as to be almost invisible, even the most desperate characters tending to take them for granted.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    In 1755, the impoverished Captain Ludvig Kahlen sets out to conquer the harsh, uninhabitable Danish heath with a seemingly impossible goal; to build a colony in the name of the King.
  • The Delinquents
    Review preview for The Delinquents

    Moreno isn’t shy about his use of symbolism...What this effects to disguise, however, is the degree to which [the men's] own thinking has been shaped by symbols and by the belief system which surrounds them.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Two bank staff rob their own establishment.
  • The New Boy
    Review preview for The New Boy

    Handsomely mounted in terms of both the wide open landscapes and the confines of the church, Thornton allows the mystery surrounding the boy’s powers to remain that way, unknowable perhaps even to the youngster.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    The story of a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy who arrives in the dead of night at a remote monastery, run by a renegade nun, where his presence disturbs the delicately balanced world.

A–Z of San Sebastian Film Festival 2023 reviews

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