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| Michael Tyburski's Turn Me On Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival |
The 11 New Directors titles have a global spread and include Turn Me On, the second film from US director Michael Tyburski, who made his debut at Sundance in 2019 with The Sound Of Silence. The film is described as a sci-fi romantic comedy, set in a new age community where people must take a pill every day to eradicate all human emotions and stars Bel Powley and Nick Robinson.
Roschdy Zem and Bella Kim star in Winter In Sokcho, the debut from French-Japanese director Koya Kamura. It relates the tale of a young Korean girl whose life is thrown into disarray when a French artist arrives in her homeland.
Turkish filmmaker Belkis Bayrak is also making the step up to features with Gulizar, which charts the story of a young victim of sexual assault in the run-up to her wedding, while Georgian Akaki Popkhadze, who has also made a number of shorts, will bring debut In The Name Of Blood, which follows the murder of a pillar of the Georgian community in Nice.
Among the second-time directors is Sivaroj Kongsakul. His debut Eternity screened at festivals in 2010 and now the Thai director entwines the fates of an old man, a little girl and a young soldier in Regretfully At Dawn. Stars And The Moon, meanwhile, is the second feature from Chinese director Yongkang Tang (Walking In Darkness), and tells the story of a boy in a mountain village who is convinced he will spot aliens in the sky.
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| Albert Serra's Tardes De Soledad Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival |
The New Directors films will compete for a €50,000 (£41,000) prize.
Other titles announced from Spain, include the latest projects from Albert Serra and Iciar Bollain.
Serra will compete for the first time at the festival will his documentary on bullfighting Tardes De Soledad. Bollain, who is a festival regular, returns to the main competition for the fifth time with I’m Nevenka, the true story of a town councillor who reported abuse by the mayor.
Pilar Palomero’s third feature Glimmers will also compete in the main section. The director picked up the Silver Shell for her previous film La Maternal and her latest tells the story of a woman who accepts the task of caring for her ailing husband despite having been separated for a more than a decade.
Debutante Pedro Martín-Calero is also in the competition line-up with The Wailing, about three women at different moments in time, connected to one another without realising it and faced with a threat bigger than all of them. It is co-written by Rodrigo Sorogoyen's regular collaborator Isabel Peña (The Realm).
Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s series Querer - about a woman who leaves her 30-year marriage and reports her husband for continued rape - will screen out of competition.
There will also be special screenings of series I, Addict and Paula Ortiz's The Red Virgin.
The Zabaltegi-Tabakalera competition will include Michael Fetter Nathansky’s Every You Every Me, which screened earlier this year in Berlin.
Two films co-produced in Spain were also announced for the Horizontes Latinos section - Argentinian Iair Said’s Most People Die On Sundays, which premiered in Cannes' ACID sidebar, and Sofía Paloma Gómez and Camilo Becerra's Maybe It’s True What They Say About Us, from Chile.
