San Sebastian Film Festival 2011

59th edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival glamoured, as it always does, the citizens of the small but charming city with amazing films and exclusive events from 16^th September to 24^th. As some of you, readers, may know I sort of took part in the festival as part of the youth jury, which can be translated as 3 films a day, some of which you may not like or even end up hating, none of your choice. It’s been almost a month already –I know, I'm dreadful, keeping you up to date- and I still haven’t come back to normal, maybe the ‘damage’ is permanent! The lousy part is that everybody is asking me to tell the experience and I really don’t know what else to say, and how else to say it. Hence why it’s taken me so long to write about this amazing experience in The Bridge, I wasn’t really feeling like finding another view to it. But The Bridge is worth the effort.

From all of the films I’ve had to watch I would recommend Take this Waltz, Silver Tongues and Wild Bill. I recommended many more in my blog but I’m not sure if some can be found in English. Anyhow, these 3 are the ones whose flashing lights still haven’t gone out of my head after all this time. In spite of all films being made by new directors, from where I was standing, they were worthy of being compared to the best. A film that I didn’t have the chance to watch was The Artist, but if I were you I would find a way to see it. I surely will.

Even if it is a Film Festival (‘film’ before ‘festival’), the atmosphere on the streets is more about ‘festival ‘ than about ‘films’, with the exception of the cinema lovers, actors, directors, producers,… that walk around the city.

During this intense week celebrity-hunting seems to be the official sport, the prize? Autographs, photos, kisses from celebrities, and the pride of being able to say that one saw this or that celebrity.

Dress code: be up to the red carpet, grown-ups try to wear their best clothes (often ridiculously when it comes to elderly people, especially women who think that some director will offer them a job in Hollywood, and I’m not making it up, true story); on the other hand, youngsters try to develop their “alternative” (don’t forget the quotation marks) look and try to be “original” (quotation marks…) and cool (quotation marks, please! And then there’s me looking like a hobo with all the clothes that my university’s dress code doesn’t allow me to wear).

All in all, it was a terrific experience and I will repeat next year if possible.