Spanish drama ‘Sundays’ wins best film at San Sebastian film festival

Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s Sundays, about an adolescent who decides to become a nun, has won the Golden Shell for best film at the closing ceremony of the 73rd edition of the San Sebastian film festival (September 19-27).

Sundays is Ruiz de Azúa’s second feature, after Berlinale-Panorama title Lullaby. She is also the fifth woman to win the top award at the SSIFF.

The film is a Spain-France co-production, as is Good Valley Stories, a documentary set in a suburb of Barcelona directed by veteran Spanish filmmaker José Luis Guerin, which won the Jury Prize.

Other top prizes given by the official competition jury, presided over by Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona, included the Silver Shell for best director to Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse, for Six Days In Spring - a family drama that also won the award for best screenplay.

The Silver Shell for the best leading performance went ex-aequo to Spanish actor José Ramon Soroiz for Spain’s Maspalomas, where he plays an elderly man confronted by a life back in the closet in a care home in the Basque country; and Zhao Xiaohong for playing her own real story in the Chinese production Her Heart Beats In A Cage, by Qin Xiaoyu.

The audience award – which presents €50,000 to the Spanish distribution company - went to the Venice-premiered The Voice Of Hind Rajab. Kaouther Ben Hania’s docufiction depicts the efforts by Palestinian Red Crescent aid workers to save a six-year-old Palestinian girl in 2024, trapped in a car in Gaza City after Israeli forces had killed family members.

Gaza was a topic very much present at this edition of the SSIFF, with a demonstration that gathered thousands of people on Wednesday in the streets of the Basque city, including the festival’s director, José Luis Rebordinos, and the Spanish minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. It was also a topic that journalists quizzed talent about at the press conferences.

Talking to Screen International yesterday, SSIFF’s director Rebordinos alluded to the press conference given by Jennifer Lawrence, recipient of the honorary Donostia award.

“We never censor questions but we listen to our guests and if a guest says they only want to talk about films, that’s what we tell journalists”, he said. “The press conference was conducted fully respecting the request of Jennifer Lawrence’s team, who told us she would not reply to any questions that were not about films. So we acted accordingly. It was not the festival’s idea, nor Mubi’s - which is handling the film. In the end, however, she did reply to a politically charged question.”

In her reply, the American actress and producer said that what’s happening in Gaza “is no less than a genocide and is unacceptable”. She added: “I wish that there was something that I could say, that I could do to fix this extremely complex and disgraceful situation that breaks my heart. But the reality, I fear, is that in speaking too much or answering too many of these questions, my words will just be used to add more fire and rhetoric to something that is in the hands of our elected officials.”

The closing film at the awards ceremony yesterday was Kasia Adamik’s Winter Of The Crow, a character-driven thriller set in early-80s Poland, starring Lesley Manville as a British psychiatrist trapped in Warsaw when the country’s communist regime declares martial law.

San Sebastian 2025 winners

Golden Shell for best film
Sundays, dir: Alauda Ruiz de Azúa

Special jury prize
Good Valley Stories, dir: José Luis Guerin

Silver Shell for best director
Joachim Lafosse for Six Days In Spring

Silver Shell For best leading performance (ex aequo)
José Ramon Soroiz for Maspalomas 
Zhao Xiaohong for Her Heart Beats In A Cage

Silver Shell For best supporting performance
Camila Plaate for Belén 

Jury prize for best screenplay
Joachim Lafosse, Chloé Duponchelle, Paul Ismaël for Six Days In Spring 

Jury prize for best cinematography
Pau Esteve for Los Tigres 

Kutxabank-New Directors Award
Emilie Thalund for Weightless 

Special mention:
Aro Berria, dir: Irati Goristidi Agirretxe

Horizontes Make & Mark Award
A Poet, dir: Simón Mesa Soto

Special mention:
The Ivy, dir: Ana Cristina Barragán
A Loose End, dir: Daniel Hendler

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award
The Ice Tower, dir: Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Special mentions
Two Times Joao Liberada, dir: Paula Tomás Marques
Blue Heron, dir: Sophy Romvari

Audience award
The Voice Of Hind Rajab, dir: Kaouther Ben Hania

Audience award for European film
Little Amélie, dir: Maïlys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han

Nest The Mediapro Studio award
How To Listen To Mountais (Slovakia), dir: Eva Sajanová

Special Mention:
The Old Bull Knows, Or Once Knew, dir: Milan Kumar

Irizar Basque film award
Sundays, dir: Alauda Ruiz de Azúa

Special mention
The Last Rapture, dir: Marta Medina

Dama Youth award
The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo, dir: Diego Céspedes

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