Several titles from major award-winning international film makers, including John Sayles, Naomi Kawasi and Raul Ruiz, have been added to the official selection line-up at the San Sebastian film festival, where they will compete for the coveted Golden Shell.

The stand-out name in competition is two-time Oscar nominee Sayles who will be in San Sebastian for the fourth time with Amigo, based on his own book Some Time In The Sun about US troops in the Philippine-American war (1899-1902), starring Chris Cooper, Joel Torre and Garret Dillahunt.

Chilean born director Ruiz also returns to San Sebastian, 16 years after his last appearance at the festival with Fado Mayor Y Menor. His new film is titled Mysterys of Lisbon and is based on a famous nineteenth-century Portuguese novel about a jealous countess, a wealthy businessman and a young orphaned boy whose lives connect with mysterious individuals across Portugal, France, Italy and Brazil.

Other newly announced titles in competition include Japanese director Kawasi’s film Genpin, which follows the activities of a doctor at a clinic handling natural births; Moroccan film-maker Daoud Aoulad Syad’s A Jamaa about a mosque left behind on the set of his last film Waiting For Pasolini, which is now being used for dangerous speeches; Norway’s Bent Hamer who will present Home For Christmas, adapted from a series of short stories by the Norwegian author Levi Henriksen, about the lives of people struggling to find their way home on Christmas Eve beneath the Northern Lights; and Argentinian director Victoria Galardi’s Cerro Bayo about the effects a matriarch’s attempted suicide has on her family.

And last, but by no means least, Scotland’s Peter Mullan will arrive with his new, personal film Neds, set in the Glasgow of 1973 about a bright, sensitive youngster drawn towards the violence of the local gang culture, starring Martin Bell, Marcus Nash and Steven Robertson.

These selections follow the recent announcement of four Catalan films also set to feature in competition, including multi award-winning director Agusti Villaronga’s post war drama Black Bread (Pa Negre), starring Sergi Lopez.  

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