This year’s San Sebastian Film Festival will show the first and second films of 11 new moviemakers in the fest’s New Directors category.
Together, with the remaining few to be announced in the coming weeks, they will compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award. Included amongst the lineup in Spain is New York-based Michael Tyburski (New York, 1984), whose second film Turn Me On stars Bel Powley (The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Everything I Know About Love) and Nick Robinson (Love, Simon, Damsel). The sci-fi romantic comedy is set in a new-age community, where people must take a pill every day to eradicate their human emotions.
Gulizar, a Turkish-Kosovar co-production about a young victim of sexual assault in the run-up to her wedding, is the feature debut from Turkish moviemaker Istanbul’s Belkis Bayrak; and Winter in Sokcho from Japanese director Koya Kamura, author of Homesick (2019), tells the story of a young Korean girl whose life is thrown into disarray when a French artist arrives.
Among the other New Directors competitors are Thai director Sivaroj Kongsakul with Regretfully at Dawn, In the Name of Blood from Georgia’s Akaki Popkhadze; and Chinese filmmaker Yongkang Tang with Stars and the Moon, about a boy from a mountain village who spends every day scouring the sky, convinced he will see aliens.
These films join the others with Spanish production already announced, such as the New Directors opening film La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés, from Antón Álvarez.
All of the films will compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award with the opportunity to win 50,000 euros ($55k) divided equally between the director and distributor of the film in Spain. The San Sebastian Film Festival commences on Sep. 20 and runs until Sep. 28.
