San Sebastian's turn, cinema festival starts

The carpet that the stars at the forthcoming San Sebastian Festival will be walking along will be fuchsia, which is the predominant colour this year in the Festival’s image.

The fuchsia carpet is 90 metres long in the route it follows along the Paseo de la Zurriola leading up to the door of the Kursaal, and 40 metres long outside the Victoria Eugenia.

The team that has made the opening film, "The Other Man", that will be walking along the carpet up to the Kursaal, will consist of the actor Antonio Banderas and the director Richard Eyre.

The director, Woody Allen, and the actors Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall will be presenting the film "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", at the session beginning at 21.30 at the Victoria Eugenia.

Over the ten days that it will last, the Festival is expecting many other celebrities to visit, as well as the aforementioned stars on the opening day:

Meryl Streep and Antonio Banderas (Donostia Awards)
Jonathan Demme, Michael Ballhaus, Martina Gusman, Masato Harada, Nadine Labaki, Clare Peploe and Leonor Watling (Official Jury)
Joan Chen, Mirtha Ibarra and Amos Gitai (Presidents of the Altadis – New Directors, Horizontes and Film Schools juries),
Antonio Banderas and Richard Eyre ("The Other Man", Opening film)
Woody Allen, Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona")
Ben Stiller and Robert Downey jr. ("Tropic Thunder", Official Selection)
David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Mark Herman, David Heyman and John Boyne ("The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas", Official Selection, out of competition)
Colin Firth and Michael Winterbottom ("Genova", Official Selection)
Paul Thomas Anderson (Fipresci Grand Prix)
John Malkovich ("Burn After Reading", Zabaltegi - Pearls)
Louis Garrel and Chistophe Honore ("La belle personne", Official Selection)
Nelson Pereira dos Santos (FIAF Award)
Mario Monicelli (Retrospective)
Terence Davies (Retrospective)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Zabaltegi Pearls and retrospective Japanese Film Noir)

The Festival still has to confirm who will be presenting "The Brother’s Bloom", the Festival’s closing Film.

Directors and actors coming:

Hirokazu Koreeda ("Aruitemo, Aruitemo / Still Walking"),
Samira Mahkmalbaf ("Asbe du-pa / Two-Legged Horse")
Javier Fesser, Carme Elias, Mariano Venancio, Nerea Camacho, Manuela Vellés ("Camino")
Kristian Levring, Ulrich Thomsen, Paprika Steen ("Den Du Frygter / Fear Me Not")
Rashid Mashrawi, Mohamed Bakri ("Eid Milad Layla / Layla’s Birthday")
Courtney Hunt, Melissa Leo, Misty Upham ("Frozen River")
Matthieu Kassovitz, Benoît Delepine and Gustave Kervern ("Louise-Michel")
Lea Pool, Lyse Lafontaine ("Maman est chez le coiffeur")
Daniel Burman, Cecilia Roth, Diego Dubcovsky, Inés Efron, Oscar Martínez ("El nido vacío / The Empty Nest")
Yesim Ustaoglu ("Pandonarin kutusu / Pandora’s Box")
Belen Macias, Veronica Echegui, Ana Wagener, Violeta Perez, Tatiana Astengo, Natalia Mateo, Maria Pau Pigem, Blanca Apilanez, Ledicia Sola ("El patio de mi carcel / My prison’s yard")
Jaime Rosales, Ion Arretxe, Iñigo Royo ("Tiro en la cabeza / Bullet in the Head")

Director Kim Ki-Duk won’t be able to come to San Sebastian as he is recovering from a car accident that he had a few days ago, but he will probably be giving a videoconference to the press.

In Zabaltegi, among others, Olivier Assayas ("L’heure d’été"), Simon Staho ("Heaven’s Heart"), Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender ("Hunger"), Eran Riklis and Hiam Abbas ("Lemon Tree"), Majid Majidi ("The Song of Sparrows"), Philippe Garrel ("La frontière de l’aube") and Bruno Todeschini ("Unspoken"), will be coming.

Heddy Honigmann ("El olvido"), Pablo Trapero ("Leonera"), Arturo Goetz ("La sangre brota"), Christian Poveda ("La vida loca") and Alex Rivera ("Sleep Dealer"), among others, will present their films at Horizontes Latinos.

The actors Carmelo Gomez, Emma Suarez, Juan Jose Ballesta, Miguel Angel Silvestre, Hugo Silva, Lucia Jimenez, Eduard Fernandez, Victor Clavijo, Felix Gomez, Manuela Velasco, El Langui and the directors Alex de la Iglesia, Paco Plaza, Jaume Balaguero, J. A. Bayona, Juan Vicente Cordoba, Gabriel Velazquez, Daniel Hernandez, Andrea Martinez are expected to come to San Sebastian too.