Saioa Riba, head of industry at the San Sebastian International Film Festival (SIFF), is gearing up to welcome nearly 2,400 professional guests to this year’s programme. Half of those are producers, 250 are buyers and 270 are sales agents. Of the total, just over half are Spanish.
This year’s industry highlights include the third edition of the Creative Investors’ Conference (September 24-25) for which guests include: David Linde, former CEO of Participant; Scott Shooman, head of AMC Networks Film Group; US producer Jennifer Fox, Netflix’s London-based director of international original film, Teresa Moneo; Oscar-winning UK producer Jeremy Thomas, founder of Recorded Picture Company; and Christine Vachon, producer/partner, Killer Films.
Riba explains what she believes to be the big and tangible benefits to the Spanish and Latin-American industries to have these Anglophone heavyweights in town.
“The idea is to create a meeting point in San Sebastian for the world industry’s leading decision-makers and bring them closer to the Spanish industry,” she says. “To create networks and at the same time share their know-how with new talents. Also to identify the new trends and needs of the current film market.”
Execs from global media outfit Anonymous Content and leading Spanish company Morena Films met during the 2022 conference and unveiled their joint venture during last year’s event.
San Sebastian is the key European event for the Spanish- speaking industry. As Riba points out, its footprint has grown considerably since the creation of the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum in 2012 and, more recently, the launch of Spanish Screenings - Financing & Tech in 2022. Although not a formal market, key buyers and sellers from companies including Mubi, The Match Factory, and Netflix will all be in town.
“We hope deals will be done during the festival, although in most cases the agreements are signed later,” says Riba. “Networking [in San Sebastian] is key.”
A dozen titles screening in official selection this year have passed through the works in progress events or coproduction forum in previous years. These range from María Trénor’s animated hippie romance Rock Bottom, premiering in Made In Spain and which participated in the festival’s Works in Progress Europa in 2023, and Lola Arias’ hybrid documentary musical Reas, screening in Horizontes Latinos, which was presented in WIP Latam, also last year.
“The WIPs are selected by the festival selection committee like any other section. After all these years, a solid editorial line has been established that guarantees the presence of the most important festival programmers, as well as sales agents who are key for the positioning of these films at an international level,” Riba notes.
Fourteen projects were chosen from 269 submissions to this year’s European-Latin American Coproduction Forum (Foro). They include titles from Paraguay (Pablo Lamar’s Remanso), Bolivia (Natalia López Gallardo’s Solo El Amor Existe and Martín Boulocq’s The Strange Woman) and Colombia (Jorge Cadena’s Tropical Malaise).
“This year we are following the same line of combining new talents with more established ones, both in terms of directors and producers,” says Riba. “There is a great variety of topics but there is a certain predominance of coming -of- age stories and projects related to gender, religion and the political situation in Latin America.”
A further industry strands, Ikusmira Berriak, turns 10 this year. This is the residency and project development programme now considered one of the festival’s most important initiatives. Films to have come through the programme include Jaione Camborda’s 2023 Golden Shell-winning The Rye Horn, Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt, which was selected for Sundance last year, Elena Lopez Riera’s The Water,a world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2022, and Creatura by Elena Martín Gimeno which was selected for Directors’ Fornight at Cannes in 2023, after participating in Ikusmira Berriak in 2020.
Twenty-four festivals are participating in this year’s Meeting of LGBTIQA+ Festivals, also celebrating its 10th edition. They will be discussing issues such as; ‘The inclusion of transmasculine realities in Ibero-American films’.
The tradition of lively debate runs throughout the industry programme with further panels and conferences engaging with topics such as the economic impact of international filming in Spain, attracting private investment in the sector and encouraging greater diversity and equality in front of and behind the cameras.
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