56th San Sebastian Film Festival starts tomorrow

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Preparations for the festival. Photo: EFE

Belen Rueda and Edurne Ormazabal will be hosting the opening gala of the 56th San Sebastian Film Festival on Thursday. The gala, that will start at 20.00 in the Kursaal, will take place on a constantly changing stage that will be including some surprises during the show.

Apart from the actress Belen Rueda, the actors Miguel Angel Silvestre, Pilar Bardem, Juan Echanove, Barbara Goenaga, Clara Lago and Alvaro Cervantes, Assumpta Serna and Lucia Jimenez will also help to introduce the various sections in the festival.

The members of the Official Jury chaired by Jonathan Demme, consisting of Michael Ballhaus, Martina Gusman Urruti, Masato Harada, Nadine Labaki, Clare Peploe and Leonor Watling, as well as Joan Chen, chairwoman of the New Directors Jury, and Mirtha Ibarra, chairwoman of the Horizons Jury, will also take part in the opening ceremony.

The Fipresci Grand Prix will also be presented to Paul Thomas Anderson for his film "There Will Be Blood".

The directors Mario Monicelli and Terence Davies, who each have a retrospective devoted to them, and the director, Rokuro Mochizuki, on behalf of the Japan in Black retrospective, will also be coming out on stage.

The team that made "Vicky Cristina Barcelona": Woody Allen, Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall, will also be at the opening gala.

Finally, the actor Antonio Banderas and the director Richard Eyre will introduce "The Other Man", the film that is opening the 56th San Sebastian Festival.

Music will provide the thread for the gala, with Josetxo Fernandez de Ortega’s piano and the leitmotiv of Luis Eduardo Aute’s song, "Cine, Cine" and its chorus: “Films, films, films, more films please; everything in life is cinema and dreams are cinema”, which will give rise to a few surprises during the ceremony.

The opening gala will be broadcast live at 20:00h on www.sansebastianfestival.com (Festival’s Official Site), on Telefestival and on the Screen of Plaza Oquendo, and on Spanish Television on the 2nd channel at 21.35.

Director: Manuel Palacios.
Set design: Juanra Martín.
Lighting: Iñaki Irastorza.
Videos: Carlos Rodríguez / Morgan Creativos
General coordinator: Diego Galán.