9 Movies In 9 Days

Film festivals are fun, but they are also tiring. The first movie we attended was at midnight on the first day of the festival, and the last was at 10:45 pm on the last day. We truly took advantage of the whole event! Of course, our Spanish studies suffered a bit this week, although we did write reviews in Spanish for several of the movies we saw.

One thing that was consistent with our overall San Sebastian experience: the movies were very reasonably priced. Each movie ticket cost only 6.15€, or about $7.25. So, our movie binge cost less than $135. A great value for so much entertainment!

We obviously tried to pick movies that we expected to enjoy, but the Film Festival is a very popular event here, so we were shut out of some we wanted to see. Instead, we added some movies we might not otherwise have seen, which had mixed results.

There were not that many US celebrities here for the festival, but John Malkovich served as the head of the festival’s jury, and we did see him on the street Saturday afternoon! Jeff gets credit for his eagle eyes; Shana would have walked by oblivious.

One thing that we especially enjoyed about the festival was that the directors are often there to present the films. Sometimes, actors or producers would attend as well. At two of the movies we attended, there were Q&A sessions afterwards with the directors who received a very positive response from the mostly Spanish audiences.

Here’s a quick rundown on the films we saw, in the order we saw them:

Call Me By Your Name: Takes place in Italy and the scenery was beautiful; this “first love” story was nothing special though.

Michelin Stars – Tales From The Kitchen: We were expecting a more analytical piece but got “puff pastry” instead. We did enjoy seeing several famous chefs in the audience.

Take Every Wave: The Life Of Laird Hamilton: Amazing presentation of an iconic big-wave surfer’s story. What Laird does on a surfboard is nothing short of amazing and seriously crazy. This was one that we might not have seen outside a film festival, but were glad we saw it.

Borg/McEnroe: Turned out to be one of our favorites. The story, which is centered on the 1980 Wimbledon final, shows that although Borg and McEnroe seemed to have very different personalities, they were really more similar than the public knew at the time.

Dad’s Lunch Box: This Japanese film tells the story of a father who makes his teenage daughter’s school lunch every day for 3 years, which was his way of showing his love. The Q&A afterwards was interesting because the Spaniards had a hard time relating to the limited nature of the relationship between the father and daughter, which was very foreign to them.

Sollers Point: We hated it. Nearly walked out. The negative side of choosing movies just because they are at a film festival.

Apostasy: The surprise of the bunch from a new director. This extremely interesting film portrays a Jehovah’s witness family struggling with a family member being “disfellowshipped” from the congregation. The director, who we spoke with afterward, had grown up as a Jehovah's Witness until he was 23. He was hoping to show the movie to his mother (still a Witness) who was not even aware of the project.

The Trip to Spain: Third in “The Trip” series with Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden. We think humor is difficult across languages/cultures. As English speakers we understood, but did not appreciate all the British humor. Not sure the native Spanish speakers really appreciated it at all; we attended the movie with friends from Portugal and Japan and they looked at us afterwards for an explanation.

The Leisure Seeker: Wonderful performances by Dame Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland in a bittersweet film.

We are already looking forward to next year’s festival!

Saludos,
Shana & Jeff