How is the San Sebastian Film Festival going?

On the evening of September 30, the results of the San Sebastian International Film Festival will be announced. Among the films shown in recent days there are those that can qualify for awards, he believes Andrey Plakhov.

“Red Island” by Robin Campillo reproduces the nostalgic atmosphere of childhood in Madagascar – “the most beautiful island in the world.” The father of the future director served there at a French airbase. His colleagues, their wives and children are in a closed microcosm that seems like paradise, and the expected expulsion from it is a misfortune and God’s punishment, because they have long lost connections with the metropolis and no one in France is especially waiting for them. At the same time, the outcome is inevitable, and the last part of the film, which began as an elegy to a boy’s childhood, turns into a rally of freedom-loving Malagasy intending to free themselves from French tutelage. Lyricism and nostalgia give way to poster political information.

The rally, but at least shown with humor, also appears in the final part of the film “Puan”filmed by the Argentine director duo – Maria Alce and Benjamin Naishtat. The hero of this dramatic comedy, Marcelo, has been teaching philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires for a long time. After the sudden death of his mentor, he hopes to become the head of the department, but his plans are ruined by the appearance of his classmate Rafael, a playboy, a favorite of European universities and the lover of a rising movie star. Brazenly positioning himself in conjunction with another philosopher – “Heidegger’s last student,” he quickly charms and wins over the local philosophical community to his side. While Marcelo, going to his mentor’s wake, accidentally stains his pants with the child’s excrement – he craps himself in the literal and figurative sense. However, in the finale the situation turns upside down: the students give up philosophical debate and take to the streets of Buenos Aires to fight for their rights. And in a situation of permanent Latin American protest, the real Marcelo turns out to be much more appropriate than the fake Rafael.

The film evoked a feeling of skillful but unpleasant manipulation Isabel Coixet “Love”. Thirty-year-old Natalya gave up city life and settled in a small village in the outback of Spain. The owner who rented her a wreck with a leaking roof openly mocks the tenant and, in addition, imposed on her a problematic hermaphrodite dog. Nevertheless, life gets better thanks to a meeting with a neighbor Andreas, who in the village is called the German. The big pot-bellied man not only fixes Natalya’s roof, but awakens an incredible passion in her: he seems to the city dweller the embodiment of powerful nature and resembles a majestic mountain peak rising above the village. All this strained pseudo-romance could have been digested if Coixet had not decided to update the plot of the novel by Sarah Mesa. The heroine of the film is translating the testimonies of African women who have been subjected to violence, and the German turns out to be half-Armenian, whose mother was a victim of genocide. And this already seems like an inappropriate stretch.

Greek Christ Nikou presented in San Sebastian “Nails” – a fantastic story about how a specially created institute tests the truth and reciprocity of love using new technology – analysis of a torn nail. Thus, Anna and Ryan, whose life together smacks of routine, are trying to check whether their feeling has evaporated. This is all the more relevant since Anna works at this very institute with the long-eyed Amir and looks at him more and more. There were fears that Nikou, who was Yorgos Lanthimos’ assistant, would make a cold, speculative film, but no, the film turned out to be lively and warm, and you even begin to believe in the wild plot premise with experimental nail pulling.

One of the best films in the main competition was Taiwanese – “Journey into Spring” (directed by Peng Qiuhue and Wang Pingwen, both female, both debutantes).

The heroes are an elderly couple, barely making ends meet, surviving by selling containers and other garbage for pennies. He suffers from lameness, every day she climbs the mountain with heavy luggage, where their miserable house is nestled. Having overstrained himself, the wife dies, and the husband places her body in an old freezer, where she remains until the appearance of a gay son, from whom the old people never received grandchildren. The only thing a widower can do in memory of his wife is to go to the waterfall, which she dreamed of seeing, and silently contemplate this beauty. Water flows down a mountainside, reminiscent of famed Taiwanese director Tsai Min-liang’s favorite motif: everything flows.

In the second “New Directors” competition, the debut film became a real discovery Askhat Kuchinchirekova (known for his leading role in “Tulip”) “Bauryna salu”. The name means an old Kazakh custom: parents give their eldest child to be raised by grandparents. The young hero of the picture hides a photo of his parents under the rug and saves money to go to them. This is what happens after the death of the grandmother, but the meeting with the father and mother, who have been killed by life, turns out to be traumatic. The everyday story grows into something much more, largely thanks to the amazing lead actor, 13-year-old Ersultan Ermanov: with rare authenticity, he lives and experiences the experience of his hero, who ultimately managed to melt his father’s heart. The sentimentality of the plot is counterbalanced by scenes of hard work in which the characters are engaged from a very tender age: they forge iron, cut down forests, extract salt from the lake. They ride horses, feed cows, and we almost physically feel the weight of this work – which extremely rarely happens in films.