The favorite films to win the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Festival

After nine intense days of cinema, the San Sebastian Festival will announce tonight the winners of a 70th edition in which controversies have not been lacking (Sparta, Pornomelancholia), last-minute casualties (the president of the jury of the section official Glenn Close did not come for family reasons) and the presence of stars (Penélope Cruz, Juliette Binoche, Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
26 September 2022 Monday 01:04
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The favorite films to win the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Festival

After nine intense days of cinema, the San Sebastian Festival will announce tonight the winners of a 70th edition in which controversies have not been lacking (Sparta, Pornomelancholia), last-minute casualties (the president of the jury of the section official Glenn Close did not come for family reasons) and the presence of stars (Penélope Cruz, Juliette Binoche, Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger...).

High quality films have been seen and others that have not been up to the level of an official section. Of course, Spanish cinematography has been very well received and it is not ruled out that films like La maternal, by Pilar Palomero, or The Rite of Spring, by Fernando Franco, could win the Golden Shell. Together with Suro, by debutant Mikel Gurrea, and Wild Sunflowers, by Jaime Rosales, make up four stories full of that realism that surrounds the recent panorama of Spanish cinema. The last Spanish film to win the Donostiarra contest was Between Two Waters, by Isaki Lacuesta, in 2018.

The Zaragoza-born Palomero, who swept the Goyas last year with Las Niñas, is presenting this time a drama about teenage mothers and the third feature film by Fernando Franco opens the debate on the right to sex of disabled people.

Regarding international films, the Colombian Los reyes del mundo, by Laura Mora, stands out, an intense road movie starring five street kids from Medellín, without family or shelter, who embark on a journey in search of a promised land. Rá, Culebro, Sere, Winny and Nano are five kings without a kingdom and on their journey they will come across the worst and the best of human beings. They dream of leading a new life on the land that Ra inherited from his grandmother and that has been returned to him by the government, but they only receive contempt and humiliation. Mora composes a moving fable that wanders between violence and poetry. All this under the cloak of a beautiful friendship and the desire that men fall asleep.

Sparta, by the Austrian Ulrich Seidl, could well give the bell despite the fact that the director has not come to defend a story that revolves around a pedophile who fights against his impulses -the camera never shows any abuse- narrated with great sobriety and high stress dose. The protagonist Georg Fiedrich gives a brilliant performance that, if the jury risks, could be worthy of the Silver Shell for the best main performance. For the second consecutive year, the Zinemaldia does not distinguish gender in this category.

The interpretation of Florence Pugh as an English nurse who has to find out if it is true or not that a girl has not eaten for four months in a town in Ireland in the 19th century in The wonder also sounds like a sure prize. And the delicate composition made by the Japanese Masaki Suda, muse of Akira Kurosawa, as a woman suffering from Alzheimer's in A hundred flowers, by Genki Kawamura, cannot be ruled out.

The wonder, by Chilean Sebastian Lelio, is another of the titles that could sound tonight in some important category for his plea against religious fanaticism. At least in the section of best photography and music. In a few hours, we will leave doubts.