Following the announcement of the Spanish films selected for the Official Selection of the 74th San Sebastián International Film Festival, including new works by Roberto Bueso, Mikel Gurrea and Javier Ruiz Caldera which are all competing for the Golden Shell (read news) – the festival has revealed the first international titles in competition.

Among the new entries Milo stands out, marking the return of French filmmaker Nicole Garcia, who previously took part in the New Directors section in 1990 with Un week-end sur deux. After premiering her recent films (From the Land of the Moon and Lovers, respectively) at Cannes and Venice, she now arrives in San Sebastián with Marion Cotillard and Théodore Pellerin. Cotillard plays a woman newly released from prison who settles in a small French town, intent on forming a relationship with the young man played by Pellerin.

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Following his recent appearance at the festival with Hard Truths, Mike Leigh returns to compete once again for the Golden Shell. The new film by the renowned British filmmaker, Tender Loving Care, remains largely under wraps, though the festival describes it as a “lucid exploration of the contemporary world”. The cast includes Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Kate O’Flynn and Alice Bailey John.

Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland also returns to San Sebastián for the second time, having previously competed in 1995 with Zero Kelvin. Growth of the Soil is the title of the new film by the director of In Order of Disappearance and Out Stealing Horses, which follows a couple whose relationship begins and unfolds in a remote mountainous landscape, as idyllic as it is challenging. Herbert Nordrum, Asta Kamma August and Gard B. Eidsvold lead the cast.

The festival has also announced further competition titles. Among them is the latest work by Chilean director Pablo Larraín, who is competing for the first time after having presented all his feature films at Cannes, Venice or Berlin. The miniseries My Sad Dead will be screened at the festival in feature-length format. It is an adaptation of four short stories by Argentine author Mariana Enríquez and centres on Ema, a woman who can see and hear the dead. San Sebastián will also screen Glaxo, the new film by Argentine director Benjamín Naishat, competing for the Golden Shell for the third time after winning awards for Rojo and Puan at previous editions. The film follows four friends whose bond was shattered decades earlier, in Argentina in 1957, with the arrival of a sinister former police commissioner and his seductive wife. Turkish filmmaker Yeşim Ustaoğlu previously won the Golden Shell in 2008 for Pandora's Box and this year she returns with What Remains, the story of a poet struggling to free herself from suffocating social constraints. Finally, the competition will include the directorial debut of Japanese screenwriter and author Maha Harada. Her film In My Father’s Room, adapted from her own novel, explores the relationship between a young woman and her recently deceased father.

The selection announced to date:

Competition

El mal padre - Roberto Bueso (Spain)
Milo - Nicole Garcia (France)
Saints - Mikel Gurrea (Spain/Italy)
In My Father’s Room - Maha Harada (Japan)
My Sad Dead - Pablo Larraín (Argentina/Chile)
Tender Loving Care - Mike Leigh (United Kingdom/United States/Singapore)
Growth of the Soil - Hans Petter Moland (Norway/Denmark/Germany)
Glaxo - Benjamín Naishtat (Brazil/Argentina)
5 More Minutes - Javier Ruiz Caldera (Spain)
What Remains – Yeşim Ustaoğlu (Turkey/France/Luxembourg/Bulgaria)