San Sebastian announces competition titles

Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Mike Leigh's Hard Truths Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival

San Sebastian Film Festival has announced its Official Selection, which this year will include the latest films from Mike Leigh, Maite Alberdi, Edward Berger, Gia Coppola, Costa-Gavras, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Diego Lerman, Joshua Oppenheimer, Laura Carreira and François Ozon.

They will compete for the Golden Shell at the festival's 72nd edition, which runs from September 20-28.

It will mark the first time Salford-born Leigh will compete at the festival. He brings British-Spanish production Hard Truths, which Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin, and depicts the everyday life of a London family, addressing such issues as family relations, mourning and mental health.

Laura Carreira's On Falling concerns the precarity of life for a Portuguese warehouse worker in Scotland Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival

Edinburgh-based Portuguese director Carreira, who previously directed acclaimed short films including The Shift, brings her feature debut On Falling, which portrays the precarious life of a Portuguese warehouse worker in Scotland.

Chilean director Alberdi also competes for the first time with her fiction feature debut. Previously known for her documentaries The Mole Agent and The Eternal Memory, El Lugar De La Otra tells the true story of writer María Carolina Geel, who shot her lover dead in 1955. Also making the move from documentary to fiction is The Act Of Killing director Joshua Oppenheimer. Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay, Bronagh Gallagher and Tim McInnerny star in The End, a dystopian musical following a wealthy family who survive in a bunker two decades after the Apocalypse.

Gia Coppola's The Last Showgirl, stars Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dave Bautista, and tells the tale of a showgirl planning for the future when her show closes after three decades.

Costa-Gavras was previously honoured with a lifetime Donostia Award in 2019 and now brings Last Breath, which centres on a palliative care doctor and a writer and stars a cast including Charlotte Rampling and Hiam Abbass.

Tilda Swinton in Joshua Oppenheimer's fiction feature debut The End Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival

All Quiet On The Western Front director Berger, brings Ralph Fiennes-starrer Conclave, about a cardinal supervising the successor to the Pope, while Xin Huo - known for screenplays including Kung Fu Hustle and The Monkey King - brings her debut Bound in Heaven, about a terminally ill man and a young girl trapped by violence and facing a race against the clock through different cities.

The competition will also include a screening of Serpent’s Path, a movie from Kiyoshi Kurosawa about a man hell bent on revenge for his daughter’s brutal murder.

Diego Lerman, meanwhile, makes his third appearance in the competition for the third time with El hombre Que Amaba Los platos Voladores, a film about Argentinian television’s best known audiovisual recording on the existence of alien presence.

Rounding out the selectio is festival regular Ozon, who previously won the Golden Shell with In The House and a Special Jury Prize for Le Refuge. he brings When Fall Is Coming, starring Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko, Ludivine Sagnier and Pierre Lottin, about a retired woman whose life changes on meeting a man, her friend’s son, recently released from prison.