Widespread presence of EQZE students at the 74th San Sebastian International Film Festival

Films made by Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola students will once again be well represented at the San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF). A significant number of productions created at the school by students and alumni will be included in the programme of the 74th SSIFF.

New Directors

The second most prominent competitive section of the SSIFF will host the world première of Bloques erráticos, the début feature by Thomas Woodroffe (Santiago de Chile, 1995), a student from the eighth intake year of the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola’s Master’s in Film Preservation Studies.

This feature film, a co-production between Chile, France and Argentina, tells the story of the ghost of a filmmaker played by Denis Lavant who, after being freed from a glacier following a hundred years of captivity, wanders through a futuristic Patagonia. His début work, the short film Fiebre austral (2019), received a special mention from the jury in the Nest competition and was also screened in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival and at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

The films in this section, all débuts and second features, compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award.

Nest and Klasikoak

This year, the Nest section for film school students will feature Bingo Night, a short film by Maria Vaughan (Miami, 1999), a student from the seventh intake year on the EQZE’s Master’s in Filmmaking Studies. The short film, which is a Spanish-Colombian co-production starring Matías Lima and Marlon Weber (also a student from the seventh intake year and a participant in the previous edition of Nest with Only Making Out), follows a woman and a man as they reminisce about a trip to a coastal town.

Also competing in Nest is A. will raus (Über Neutralität) by Zorah Berghammer, a student from the ninth intake year who began her studies at the EQZE this September. This short film was made as part of her studies at the Filmakademie Wien (Film Academy Vienna).

Both short films were selected, along with another twelve, from among the 503 submissions received from 232 schools across 61 countries. A jury made up of students from the selected schools and chaired by a film industry professional will award the winner the Tabakalera-Nest Film and Audiovisual Laboratory Prize.

For its part, the Klasikoak section of the San Sebastian International Film Festival will present the new 4K version of Parade (Jacques Tati, 1974). Margaux Chalançon (Paris, 1993), a student from the fourth intake year on the Master’s in Film Preservation Studies and an audiovisual archivist for Les Films de Mon Oncle participated in the restoration work. The restoration of what was Tati’s final feature film proved particularly complicated as it was shot on 35 mm, 16 mm, Super 16 and, to a large extent, on video, at a time when that technology was in its infancy.

Zinemira

In the Zinemira section, dedicated to Basque cinema, the San Sebastian International Film Festival will screen a selection of short films from the Kimuak 2026 catalogue, including High River by Daniel Alegrete (Madrid, 1993), a graduate from the seventh intake year on the EQZE’s Master’s in Filmmaking Studies.

The short film, a drama set in a gay club in Bilbao during the catastrophic floods of August 1983, was already screened earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival’s Short Film Corner as part of the ICAA’s 2cool4school initiative, and stems from the development of High, a feature film on which Alegrete is currently working.

Projects under development

Three other film projects (in this case films under development) also scheduled to participate in the San Sebastian International Film Festival are The Spirit Healer is Away for the Weekend (Inês Nunes, Tavira, 1993) and Akira (Ekain Albite, Zumaia, 1999), both by students from the sixth intake year and residents within the latest Ikusmira Berriak programme; and the latest work by Ernesto Martínez Bucio (Michoacán, 1983), a student from the fourth intake year who, after winning the Best First Feature Film award at the Berlinale for El diablo fuma, is now presenting Este es el recuerdo que me gustaría tener de mamá as part of the Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum.

Alumni and students from the EQZE will also participate in other areas of the Festival (industry, programming, technical field, communications and public relations, among others), both through the school’s professional work experience programme and as the result of direct contracts with the SSIFF. Students from the eighth and ninth intake years will follow a specific agenda during the festival, attending screenings, masterclasses and the Nest International Film Students Meeting and engaging in other activities.