18/09/2003 - Rivette, Herrero, Per Fly, Peter Webber and many other directors from the Old Continent are appearing at the showcase which starts in the Basque city today and goes on until September 27

Even though it’s now past its landmark 50th birthday, the San Sebastian Festival (September 18-27) is still as strong as in its younger days. The programme for this year’s 51st edition has a decisively European flavour. In fact, apart from the Americans Open Range by Kevin Costner, which will be closing the Festival and The Station Agent by Tom McCarthy, being shown in the Our of Competition Section, and the Brazilian Vicente Amorin in competition with O Caminho das Nuvens, all the other films in the official competition are European productions or co-productions.
In spite of the fact that the original president of the jury, Chazz Palminteri, pulled out at the last minute, the jury will continue with its work all the same. It will have to choose prize-winners from entries by directors of the calibre of Peter Webber and his eagerly awaited film The Girl with a Pearl Earring [+see also:
trailer
film profile] inspired by one of the most successful bestselling books in 2002, then there’s the Spanish director Gerardo Herrero with a story about the death of the Basque politician Jésus Galindez, El Misterio Galìndez, the Frenchman Jacques Rivette with Histoire de Marie et Julien, the Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam and his post-modernist version of the fairytale Hansel & Gretel in Grimm and the Scandinavian co-production Inheritance directed by Per Fly.

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But the programme is packed with many more goodies. Apart from a wide-ranging retrospective on the cinema of Arabian-Africa, and the retrospectives dedicated to Preston Sturges and Michael Winterbottom, the festival is also giving over plenty of space to the new upcoming talents in the film industry, for example Icìar Bollaìn’s 3rd feature film being shown out of competition, Te Doy Mis Ojos [+see also:
trailer
film profile], or Achero Mañas 2nd feature length film as a director, Noviembre, after his first work Pellet. In fact 16 new talents will be put in the spotlight in the “Zabaltegi” section: from the Spaniards Patxi Barco (El final de la noche), Manuel Martìn Cuenca (La flaqueza del Bolchevique) and Juan Madrid (Tanger), who will be appearing alongside other young European authors like the Belgium director Benoît Mariage (L'autre), the Dutchman Pieter Kuijpers (Van God Los [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and the Czech director Michaela Pavlàtova (Faithless game).
The whole festival starts tonight with the opening screening of Suite Habana by Fernando Perez, a co-production between Spain and Cuba.

(Translated from Italian)