15/09/2005

Journalist Edurne Ormazabal and actress Rosa Maria Sardá are tonight hosting the Opening Gala for the 53rd San Sebastian International Film Festival. It is the official start of a 10 day journey which will bring to the coast-city of the Spanish Basque Country a selection of national, European and International titles, some of them previously unseen in Europe.

Attending the opening ceremony will be the jury of the Official Section: the American actress Angelica Houston, Spanish actress Verónica Forqué, Italian actor Enrico Lo Verso, French scriptwriter and director Claude Miller, Danish director Lone Scherfig, Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta, and American set-designer Dean Tavoularis. The team, chaired by Houston will have to choose between 20 titles, the first one of them is Montxo Armendáriz's Obaba, which will screen during the ceremony.
Mixing magical realism and mystery, Armendáriz's new opus was written by the director himself based on a short story by Bernardo Axtaga. Bárbara Lennie stars as Lourdes, a film student who his shooting the daily lives of the local habitants of Obaba as part of a school assignment. She soon realises that strange phenomena are taking place over there, phenomena which might be related to the lizards that plague the locals. The film was produced by Puy Oria (Oria Films) and Karl Baumgartner (Pandora Films) and it is one of the five Spanish titles in competition for the Golden Shell. Armendáriz's film will compete against Seven Virgins, the second feature by Alberto Rodríguez, Fabián Bielinsky's El Aura, Manuel Martín Cuenca's Malas Temporadas, Sud Express by Chema de la Peña and Gabriel Velázquez and the Spanish-Moroccan production La Vida Perra de Juanita Narboni by Farida Benlyazid. A national focus on the official section of a festival often said to be too American-oriented. An opinion which is heard once again this year thanks to the major retrospectives of the 53rd edition (Abel Ferrara and Robert Wise) and the Donostia Awards, which recognises this year the careers of Ben Gazzara and Willem Dafoe.

Outside the film screening sphere, the big focus on European cinema will take place on Thursday 22nd of September, a day dedicated to the role played by non-state public institutions in the development and completion of film projects. The "Cinema and Regions in Europe" workshop will gather around the same table professionals from the Spain Film Commission, the European Audiovisual Observatory, the Barcelona Plató, the Consorcio Audiovisual Galego, and the CICAE. The workshop will end with the European Personality of the Year Award, given to Claude Miller and Claude-Eric Poiroux for their work at the head of Europa Cinemas.

Cineuropa will cover the 53rd San Sebastian Film Festival on a daily basis.