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San Sebastian Film Festival · 2026

San Sebastian Film Festival 2026

New Directors

Programme

14 films · 1 review

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The Bad Son (El Mal Hijo)

When 11-year-old Ruben’s father mysteriously disappears, the boy has to move in with his grandmother, a woman he barely knows.

(Country: Spain; Year: 2026; Director: Jaime Lorente; Writer: Salvador S Molina; Stars: Miguel Ángel Puro, Susi Sánchez, Hugo Arbues, Óscar de la Fuente, Abel de la Fuente)

Section opening film

The Ballet Lesson

In a provincial Japanese town, Japanese-Russian siblings Nikita and Nina live an isolated life with their Russian grandparents, knowing their absent parents only through stories. When their father Nikolai suddenly returns, he takes them on a journey to see their mother Yuki, a Japanese ballet dancer.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2026; Director: Kazuya Murayama)

Body Of Glass

After a violent incident with her controlling partner Felix, dancer Tian flees their shared life in Marseille. Isolated and desperate for connection, she infiltrates the grieving circle of a young man she never knew.

(Country: Germany, France; Year: 2026; Director: Naëmi Ada; Stars: Soma Pysall, Elise Tilloloy, Manuel Severin, Younès Boucif)

Cute

Troubled by forbidden feelings for his seven-year-old stepdaughter, Richard decides to leave his girlfriend. He retreats to his childhood home but his self-imposed exile is disrupted by the childlike presence of his mother's caregiver, Stella. He soon discovers her double life as a Lolita camgirl, and the two develop a transgressive surrogate father-daughter relationship.

(Country: Denmark; Year: 2026; Director: Marlene Emilie Lyngstad; Writer: Marlene Emilie Lyngstad, Emilie Koefoed Larsen; Stars: Jan Gunnar Røise, Gina Jaqueline, Kitt Maiken Mortensen)

Erratics (Bloques erráticos)

Freeing himself after spending a hundred years trapped in a glacier, the ghost of the filmmaker Lucien Castelnau wanders through a futuristic Patagonia, where technological progress clashes with forgotten stories.

(Country: Chile, France, Argentina; Year: 2026; Director: Thomas Woodroffe; Writer: Valeria Hofmann, Thomas Woodroffe, Antonio Luco; Stars: Denis Lavant, Daniel Muñoz)

February, Seven Days

Two different notions of family identity clash when a man from Odesa and his son visit his brother in Germany for the funeral of their mother, the day before the Ukraine war breaks out.

(Country: Germany, Austria; Year: 2026; Director: Tatjana Moutchnik; Writer: Tatjana Moutchnik; Stars: Sergey Korshikov, Mariia Shtofa, Volodymyr Holosniak, Arsenii Markov, Moisej Bazijan, Daria Guitbout, Anastasiya Kasilova)

Florid

Review preview for Florid

Clear-sighted perspective, coupled with carefully calibrated sound design from Dario Swade, doesn’t make light of what Jamal experiences, but nor does it sensationalise them.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
A young man in supported housing tries to juggle his musical aspirations and mental health issues.

(Country: UK; Year: 2026; Director: Billy Lumby; Stars: Jonathan Jules, Saskia Chana, Abdul Basith, Unknown T, Clare Holman, Jennifer Greenidge, Marlon Bravi)

Full review See: Florid director Billy Lumby and his cast on bringing an authentic picture of mental health to the big screen

Section closing film

Lovers Sleep Alone

Iman has built his life in Berlin around absence. From his family, from Iran, from being known. He fills the silence with work, invented stories, and nights with a man he meets for sex in the park. When his cousin, whom he barely knows, arrives from Tehran for a brief visit, what he left behind quietly finds its way back to him.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2026; Director: Massih Parsaei; Writer: Massih Parsaei; Stars: Pooyesh Frozandeh, Ava Darvishi, Marcel Kohler, Wolfgang Webeto, Ann-Kristin Reyels, Florens Schmidt)

Morro

Mateo is a small-town vet. Since his son died, he has lived a life of silent routines and nameless guilt. This fragile balance is broken when Mateo has to heal Morro, the local capo’s injured dog.

(Country: Mexico; Year: 2026; Director: Rodrigo García Saiz; Stars: Gustavo Sánchez Parra, Anna Diaz, Ernesto Meléndez)

Mugalim

Zhandos, a music teacher, lives in the small town of Balkhash and dreams of moving to a big city. He is loved by his students, and the school turns a blind eye to his side jobs. When a patron nostalgic for his hometown arrives, Zhandos is given the chance to leave and must decide what matters more: the art within him, or himself within art.

(Country: Kazakhstan; Year: 2026; Director: Ayana Nurdinova; Stars: Oljas Dalelkhan, Rustem Zhanyamanov, Shynar Janysbekova, Olga Landina, Gulnara Dusmatova, Akif Petrov, Madina Yesmanova, Anna Starchenko, Ruslan Duysembekov)

My Father's Shoes (Obuvkite na bashta mi)

Mima has grown up in the shadow of her father's absence, raised by her uncompromising mother, Boyka. When news of his death arrives and his body returns to their village, recognition becomes both duty and dilemma. As Boyka refuses to face the man she once loved, mother and daughter confront a silent past, forcing Mima to decide what it means to inherit a life she never chose.

(Country: Bulgaria, France; Year: 2026; Director: Hristo Simeonov)

This Solitude

Leo and Lorea have loved one another. Maybe they still do. But something in them has broken. After five years, their relationship is done. He looks after his sick father, trapped between responsibility and an emotional void that weighs him down. She, caught up in poorly-paid jobs and personal crises, tries to get her life back on track without really knowing where to begin.

(Country: Spain; Year: 2026; Director: Javier Giner; Writer: Luisa Matienzo, Javier Giner; Stars: Oriol Pla, Marina Salas, Gemma Martínez, Kai Etxaniz, Itziar Lazkano, Ione Irazabal, Miren Gaztañaga, Mikel Bustamente, Ainhoa Artetxe, Fernando Guallar, Eneko Sagardoy, Omar Ayuso)

Will You Still Be My Friend

Amid an escalating feud in a rural Taiwanese village, a boy struggles to protect his secret friendship with his Singapore-raised best friend as adult conflicts threaten to tear them apart.

(Country: Taiwan, Singapore; Year: 2026; Director: Lu Po-shun; Writer: Lu Po-shun, Chen Chia-ping; Stars: Lu Yi-ching, Lung Tien-hsiang, Chang Tsai-hsing, Kate Pang, Andie Chen, Aloysius Looi, Jaden Wang)

The World Before

A teenager who has never left the island where she was born, begins a love affair.

(Country: South Korea; Year: 2026; Director: Yoon Dan-bi; Writer: Yoon Dan-bi; Stars: Sim Su-bin, Kim Eo-jin)