Films by Roberto Bueso, Mikel Gurrea and Javier Ruiz Caldera in Competition, as well as the latest works from Isaki Lacuesta, Fernando Trueba, JA Bayona, Elena Martin Gimeno and Sandra Romero, are among the 25 Spanish productions selected for the 2026 San Sebastian International Film Festival (SSIFF), taking place from September 18-26.
A fresh crop of filmmakers is behind the three films competing for the Golden Shell at San Sebastian.
Two of them are first-timers in the section: Bueso, with the family drama The Bad Father (El Mal Padre), starring multi-Goya award winner Eduard Fernández, who also won the Silver Shell at San Sebastián in 2016 for Smoke & Mirrors; and Caldera, with the comedy 5 More Minutes. The film is about a married couple in crisis trapped in a time loop and stars Javier Cámara.
Back in competition after his first feature Cork was selected in 2022, San Sebastián-born filmmaker Gurrea is back in the race for the Golden Shell with Saints. The film tells the story of a young woman who returns home to look after her mother and meets a group of burglars who specialise in stealing religious artworks from churches. Victoria Luengo leads the cast after starring in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved and Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, both in Competition in Cannes.
The official selection also includes El Castillo, a six-part series about organised crime and prostitution for Movistar Plus, created by writers Isabel Pena and Eduardo Villanueva. It is directed by Elena Martin Gimeno, whose second feature Creatura won the Europa Cinemas’ award for best European film in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2023, and Sandra Romero, whose first feature, As Silence Passes, was selected for San Sebastián’s New Directors section in 2024.
The SSIFF official selection will also include special screenings of Fernando Trueba’s Bajañí, a music documentary that explores the connection of flamenco with jazz and Brazilian music; Daniel Monzón’s historical drama Pray For Us; David Pérez Sañudo’s period crime thriller The Harvester; and Koldo Almandoz’s comedy drama The Last Goodbye.
The section will also premiere the non-fiction series Beyond Society, created by Bayona and Carlos Torres and directed by the latter. It is about the lives of the survivors of the 1972 plane crash in the Andes that inspired Bayona’s feature Society Of The Snow.
New Directors, devoted to first and second works, will premiere Javier Giner’s debut feature This Solitude. Giner previously directed the series I, Addict, which played as a special screening at San Sebastian 2024.
Also in this section are Jaime Lorente’s family drama The Bad Son and Ukrainian director Tatjana Moutchnik’s Spanish co-production February, Seven Days. The latter won the WIP Europa prize at the festival’s industry awards last year.
Several international co-productions also feature in the Zabaltegi Tabakalera section: Meritxell Colell Aparicio’s Far From The Trees; Bruno Dumont’s Red Rocks, which premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight; and Tsai Ming-Liang’s Dust, part of the Walker series, this time set in the Basque Country. The documentary Flamenco Sketches, the newest by two-time Golden Shell-winner Isaki Lacuesta, and Oskar Alegria Suescun’s Hamalau Gau will also premiere in this section.
The Perlak section, a selection of titles that have premiered on the international circuit, includes Spain-France co-production La Bola Negra, which won the best director award for Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi in Cannes.
SSIFF also announced a total of five features in Horizontes Latinos, the section with Spanish-Latin American co-productions previously premiered in Cannes and Berlin: Fernando Eimbcke’s Flies, Diego Luna’s Ashes, Manuela Martelli’s The Meltdown, Marcelo Martinessi’s Narciso and Fernanda Tovar’s Sad Girlz.
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