Jonatan Etzler’s “Bad Apples,” and Stroma Cairns’ “The Son and the Sea” are two of the 14 titles selected for this year’s San Sebastián New Directors strand, the biggest sidebar outside the festival’s main competition, along with its Horizontes Latinos section.
Starring “Game of Thrones’” Jason Anderson and “Hanna’s” Saoirse Ronan and described as a primary school set biting satirical comedy with thriller elements, Bad Apples” reps the English-language debut of Swedish writer-director Etzler (“One More Time”). HanWay Films launched pre-sales at 2023’s American Film Market of the film, produced by the U.K.’s Pulse Films.
A BAFTA TV Award winner for mini series “Mood,” on which she directed three of its six episodes, Cairns’ “The Son and the Sea” marks her feature debut, a rites-of-passage tale set on the Northeast coast of Scotland.
Targeting first or second features, the New Directors lineup also takes in “As We Breath,” from Turkey’s Seyhmus Altun, which made the cut of San Sebastian’s WIP Europa, and “Redoubt,” the fiction debut of Sweden’s John Skoog, a CPH:DOX winner with “Ridge.”
There is good word-of-mouth on Yukari Sakamoto’s “White Flowers and Fruits,” a supernatural-tinged drama set at a Christian all-girls boarding school, and on Indian Tribeny Rai’s “Shape of Momo,” presented at 2024’s Film Bazaar Work-in-Progress, in which a women returns to her the village where she was born in Nepal. The film aims to reshape women’s position in society, Variety observed.
New Directors’ Titles:
“Bad Apples,” (Jonathan Etzler, U.K.)
Based on Rasmus Lindgren, with a screenplay by Jess O’Kane, “Bad Apples” turns on a primary school teacher (Ronan) who takes desperate measures to control an unruly pupil. “Jonatan has an unparalleled ability to create hilarious and horrifying cinema from the uncomfortable truths of human nature,” Pulse Films producer Oskar Pimlott has commented.
“As We Breathe,” (“Aldigimiz Nefes,” Seyhmus Altun, Turkey-Denmark)
A WIP Europa player last year under the working title of “Memento non Mori,” Kurdish-Turkish filmmaker Seyhmus Altun’s debut film narrates a story set in the rural Anatolia, following a 11-year-old girl who must help her father manage new and old troubles after a chemical fire spreads smoke across her village. A Toronto Discovery sidebar world premiere.
“Aro Berria,” (aka “Anekumen,” Irati Gorostidi, Spain)
Already announced, The awaited feature expansion of rising Basque director Gorostidi’s Cannes Critics’ Week short “Contadores,” set in a late ‘70s hippy commune in the mountains, home to idealists disillusioned by the toothlessness of Basque workers movement. From leading Basque producer Leire Appellaniz via Apellaniz y de Sosa (“The Sacred Spirit”) and Sr. & Sra (“Samsara”), released in Spain by top arthouse-crossover distributor Elástica Films.
“Before the Bright Day,” (“Nan Fang Shi Guang,” Shih-Han Tsao, Taiwan)
A feature debut that follows a sensitive teenager, craving independence, who during the third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996, must navigate tensions in his family, friends and love. Shih-Han Tsao’s short-film “A Dream of Spring” played in 2017 at Clermont-Ferrand, the preeminent hub for short-form cinema.
“Dance of the Living,” (“La Lucha,” Jose Alayón, Spain)
Unspooling on the arid island of Fuerteventura and set against the world of traditional wrestling, a father-daughter relationship drama with both cast adrift by the death of the family’s wife and mother. Better known as a producer at El Viaje Films, a significant international co-producer (“White on White”), Ayalón’s second movie as a director, working with ace DP Mauro Herce (“Sirât”).
“Foreign Lands,” (“Chuzhie Zemli,” Anton Yarush, Sergey Borovkov, Russia)
The filmmaking debut by the duo formed by Yarush, a screenwriter behind San Sebastián Zabaltegi-Tabakalera player “Closeness” and Kira Kovalenko’s multi-award winning “Unclenching the Fists,” and Borovkov, also DP. A successful Russian film director obsesses over finding the perfect actress for his next project. As weeks pass, the producer makes decisions without him and he falls ever deeper in self-destruction.
“If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night,” (Kim Torres, Costa Rica)
“Nightime Sounds,” (Zhang Zhongchen, China)
“Redoubt,” (“Värn,” John Skoog; Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, U.K., Switzerland)
The sophomore feature by contemporary artist-turned-director Skoog, the black-and-white film is based on the true story of a Swedish farm worker who, during WWII began to fortify his house after receiving a warning by the Swedish government of potential strikes by the Soviet army. Plattform Produktion, the Goteborg-based banner run by two-time Palme d’Or winning director Ruben Ostlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) and Erik Hemmendorff, produce. “Ridge,” his first feature, won CPH:DOX in 2019.
“The Shape of Momo,” (Tribeny Rai, India)
“The Son and the Sea,” ( Stroma Cairns, U.K., U.S.)
Jonah, charismatically ADHD and dyslexically created, travels with best mate Lee to Northeast Scotland where they meet Charlie, who is profoundly deaf. Their friendship brings Jonah to “discover the courage to be vulnerable and that joy is possible despite loss,” says the synopsis. Pic “brings personal experience and threads of familial history together to ask: How will boys become men if there’s no one to show them the way? Cairns has commented.
“Weightless,” (“Vaegtloes,” Emilie Thalund, Denmark)
Thalund’s debut turns on a fifteen-year-old girl who spends her summer at a camp where she hopes to lose weight. There she meets a fun, lively and self-assured girl, as well as falling for a charming monitor. Produced by Anna Dammegaard Søllested and Clara Jantzen Kreinøe at Copenhagen-based Snowglobe, the Copenhagen-based prodco behind films by Amat Escalante, Ask Hasselbalch, Ciro Guerra and Carlos Reygadas.
“White Flowers and Fruits,” Yukari Sakamoto (Japan)
More to come
