07/09/2002 - A great line up to celebrate the Spanish festival's landmark birthday, a career award for Coppola and Wim Wenders to judge the best of 18 contenders for the Golden Shell

The landmark 50th Donostia-San Sebastian Film Festival (19-28 Sept) has an exceptionally rich programme that includes 18 films in competition with a jury presided over by Wim Wenders and a jury of Ariane Ascaride, Mariano Barroso, Renato Berta, Principe Chartri Chalerm Yukol, Mirtha Ibarra and Angela Pope. Their task is to award the Golden Shell awards for best film, director, actor, actress, photography and screenplay. The Audience Award, a hefty Euros30,000 will go towards covering the promotion costs of the winning movie.
Fipresci, the international film critics’ guild will present Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki with the Best Film 2002 award for The Man Without A Past while Britain’s Lynne Ramsay beat 17 other contenders to win the first-ever Best New Director Fipresci for Movern Callar.
Neil Jordan’s the Good Thief (GB, France, Ireland) will open the festival and Danièle Thompson’s Decalage Horaire (France) will close it – both out of competition.
The subjects of this year’s retrospectives are German director Volker Schlöndorff, British director/producer Michael Powell and 50 films in 50 Years, a selection of fifty of the most significant films made during the last half-century. American director Francis Ford Coppola will receive a lifetime achievement Golden Shell.