San Sebastian adds to lineup

San Sebastian has almost completed its official selection for this year’s festival.

Today [Aug 13], the festival added new films from Susanne Bier, Anahí Berneri, Maxime Giroux and Cédric Kahn, as well as Gabe Ibáñez’s Automata, a $50m Spanish film produced by and starring Antonio Banderas.

Bier’s A Second Chance was written by Anders Thomas Jensen, with whom Bier won the Oscar for In a Better World. Festival director José Luis Rebordinos has praised it as “a very strong and powerful story that will shock audiences”. 

Automata is an ambitious sci-fi thriller about a future in which artificial intelligence has taken over humans. A co-production with Bulgaria, it also stars Brigitte Hjort Sorensen, Melanie Griffith and Dylan McDermott.

South America will again have an important role in the festival. Argentinian Berneri hit the Festival in 2007 with Encarnación and comes back with Open Air, about a couple who rediscovers their love.

Meanwhile, Chilean Cristian Jiménez will compete with La Voz En Off, the only comedy in the Official Selection, about a 35 year old woman who decides to take a vote of silence in reverse: no mobile phone, no TV, no Internet and no books for a year. 

French director Kahn will present Wild Life, a drama inspired by a true story about a divorced man who kidnapped his two children and lived with them in the forest.

Finally, in a year which will see twelve Canadian producers visit the festival for a summit, Canadian director Giroux will screen Felix and Meira, set in an orthodox Jewish community. 

For more information, visit the festival’s website.