The Santander Film Festival (FCS) will celebrate its tenth edition from 11-17 September, with its programme unspooling across various venues in the city, including the Centro Botín, the Mario Camus Filmoteca de Cantabria, Cines Embajadores, the Casyc Theatre and the Los Ángeles Cinema. Organised by Morena Films and the Centro Botín, the gathering will once again combine the discovery of new Spanish and Latin American talent with retrospectives, encounters with filmmakers, series premieres and professional activities.

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The official Óperas Primas section, dedicated to first and second Spanish and Latin American fiction features that have yet to be released in Spain, will bring together seven titles in competition. They are Naira by Gabriela Quiroz, Nunkui by Verenice Benítez, El regresado by Armando Capó, SITCOM by Pau Berlanga, Lo que trajo la tormenta by Miguel de Zuviría, Te amo, Antoño by Tamara Leschner and Gente de la ruta by Lucas Koziarski. The competition thus confirms the festival’s focus on emerging cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the Cantabria Infinita strand, dedicated to productions directed or produced by professionals from the region or shot in Cantabria, will feature five movies in competition. Two of them, documentaries La patria de los heladeros by Maite Vitoria Daneris and Las capas de la lasaña by Guillermo Ruiz, will world-premiere in Santander. The selection is rounded off by Even If We Are Islands by Cristina Rodríguez Paz, Better Class by Víctor García León, and Level by Anna Berkhof and Carlos Mora Fuentes.

The non-competitive Special Screenings section will showcase a number of recent Spanish films. The festival will open with The Beloved, which will be presented by its director, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and topliner Victoria Luengo, who will also take part in an encounter with the audience. Other titles set to be screened are Ese niño de la fotografía by Anna Saura, La luz by Fernando Franco, Iván & Hadoum by Ian de la Rosa and Bitter Christmas by Pedro Almodóvar.

One of this edition’s new features will be the revamped Orígenes section, which is moving away from its previous broad focus on classic cinema to concentrate on the debut features by established Spanish and Latin American filmmakers. Fernando Trueba will present Ópera prima, Isabel Coixet will accompany Things I Never Told You, Montxo Armendáriz will do likewise with Tasio, and Pilar Palomero will revisit Schoolgirls. The initiative aims to explore those early works that marked a turning point in their directors’ careers.

The Series section will also adopt a new format, hosting the world premieres of the opening episodes of two Spanish productions. On 13 September, audiences will be able to discover In Vitro, created and directed by Cantabrian filmmaker Marc Crehuet, and toplined by Bruna Cusí and David Verdaguer. The following day will see the presentation of Second Season, a new original series from Filmin, produced by Boogaloo Films and Canada. Its first two episodes will be presented by Miguel Ángel Blanca, Berta Prieto and Adán Domínguez.

The festival will also strengthen its programme of encounters and tributes. Juan Antonio Bayona will be the guest of honour and will give a master class on 14 September alongside José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastián International Film Festival. The FCS will also dedicate a retrospective to Bayona’s feature films. Albert Serra will receive the Honorary Faro, and will speak with critic and filmmaker Marta Medina about creative freedom and the search for one’s own voice, while Alauda Ruiz de Azúa will be presented with the Carlos Saura Honorary Faro.

The awards will be rounded off by the Faro Verde for Elena Anaya, in recognition of her commitment to environmental protection; the Faro Dos Orillas for Argentinian actress and director Dolores Fonzi; and the Faro Talento Joven for Gemma Blasco.

On the professional front, Santander will once again host the Platino Next Gen project lab, promoted by EGEDA and subsequently linked to San Sebastián and Iberseries & Platino Industria. In addition, with the collaboration of Fundación SGAE and DAMA, three round-tables will address artificial intelligence in the audiovisual sector, the creative processes behind debut features and support for local production, bolstering the industry dimension of an edition that aims to celebrate its tenth anniversary by looking both to new creators and to the transformations taking place across the Ibero-American audiovisual landscape.