by Gill Pringle in San Sebastián
While Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel features in the prestigious main competition, Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy appears in the Perlak section competing for the audience award alongside fellow Australian director Craig Gillespie and his dramedy, Dumb Money.
Musing over this year’s strong Australian presence, SSIFF Festival Director, José Luis Rebordinos tells FilmInk, “We select films because they seem relevant to us, not because of their country of origin. It is a coincidence that, rather than talking about San Sebastián’s selection criteria, it speaks to the current moment of Australian cinema and its diversity: Kitty Green’s proposal in the Official Selection and those of Craig Gillespie and Warwick Thornton in Perlak, without forgetting Cate Blanchett’s [and Andrew Upton’s] role as producer of Fingernails which, alongside The Royal Hotel, is competing for the Golden Shell.”
SSIFF’s programmers have long memories, recalling how Robert Connolly featured in the New Director selection back in 2001 with The Bank. Since then, of course, he has gone on to direct The Slap, The Dry, Paper Planes and many other favourites.
Kitty Green’s thriller The Royal Hotel sees her team once more with Ozark star Julia Garner, whom she first directed in 2019 drama The Assistant.
While attending the Victorian College of the Arts, Green’s short film, Spilt, premiered at the Brisbane International Film Festival, prompting her to travel to Europe and the US where she has directed several award-winning documentaries.
The Royal Hotel is her most ambitious project yet – featuring American friends Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), who are backpacking around Australia. After running out of money, they are forced to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called ‘The Royal Hotel’ in a remote Outback mining town. Bar owner Billy and a host of locals give the girls a riotous introduction to Down Under drinking culture until they soon find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of control.
Meanwhile, Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money follows in the tradition of The Big Short and other satirically acerbic takes on money booms and busts in deregulated America.
Starring Paul Dano, Seth Rogen and America Ferrera, Dumb Money follows the true story of how everyday people flipped the script on Wall Street by turning videogame store GameStop into the world’s hottest company.
Best known for I, Tonya and Lars and the Real Girl, Gillespie [above on Dumb Money set] also directed Cruella and The Finest Hours. Born and raised in Sydney before moving to New York, aged 19, he studied graphic design and illustration before becoming a commercials director.
With such a strong Australian presence this year, festival veterans are reminded of when Hugh Jackman was in this elegant Basque city ten years ago in support of crime drama, Prisoners. Jackman delighted locals by hopping on a bike and cycling around the city, popping up in the least expected places.
Many international directors have made their debut at SSIFF including Jonathan Glazer with Sexy Beast in 2000 and Kyusuke Hamaguchi with Passion in 2008 and Lila Aviles with The Chambermaid in 2018. Glazer returns again this year to the Perlak selection with The Zone of Interest, already being talked about as an Oscar contender.
One of the most elegant – and longest-running – festivals in Europe, this year’s 71st SSIFF features 161 feature films, 6 medium-length films, 7 series and 58 short films after the selecting committee viewed 4,184 films.
Showcasing entries from 58 countries across 684 screenings hosted at 23 cinemas – the programme features 57 World premieres, 7 International premieres, 12 European premieres and 53 Spanish premieres.
While the fall film festivals have struggled with a lack of star-power necessitated by the on-going SAG-AFTRA strike, Jessica Chastain will be present, joining her director Michel Franco to present their film, Memory. Other confirmed festival attendees include Juliette Binoche, Gabriel Byrne, François Cluzet, Emmanuelle Devos, Griffin Dunne, Aidan Gillen, Miles Heizer, Mads Mikkelsen and Leonardo Sbaraglia.
