“Or how“, by the Basque director Jaione Cambordaa rural drama about a matron in Galicia at the end of the Franco regime, has won the Golden Shell from 71 San Sebastian Festivalwhich thus recognizes the first feature film shot in the Galician language that competed in the Official Section.

Camborda, the fourth woman to win this award consecutively, has highlighted the importance of “the references that paved the way” in cinema and has shared the award with “female filmmakers who are yet to come.

He Special Jury Prizethe second in importance, has been for “Kalak“, a drama about child abuse by Swedish screenwriter and director Isabella Eklöf, which also won the award for best cinematography.

The Silver Shell The best direction has also gone to two women, the Taiwanese Peng Tzu-Hui and Wang Ping-Wen for his debut feature, “A trip in spring“, a poetic portrait about marriage and grief shot in analogue and in the Taiwanese language.

If the main awards have been won by female directors, those for acting, which since 2021 have not distinguished gender categories, have gone to men.

The Silver Shell for best lead performance has gone, ex aequo, to the Argentine actor Marcelo Subiotofor the philosophical comedy “Puan“and the Japanese veteran Tatsuya Fuji82, for the drama about dementia “Great absence“. And the one with the best cast performance in the Spanish of Armenian-Lebanese origin Hovik Keuchkerianfor his role in “One Love“, of Isabel Coixet.

“Puan“, written and directed by Benjamin Naishtat and María Aiché, has also won the jury award for best script for a story set in the university world that invites us to put ego struggles aside to defend public education. Naishtat, who in 2018 won the best director award for “Rojo” in this same competition, has dedicated this new recognition “to the teachers who taught us to write and think in the Argentine Republic.”

The Horizontes Latinos Award also travels to Argentina. The winner has been “the castle“, by Martín Benchimol, a story that combines documentary and fiction, which talks about class differences through the story of two women who inherit a decadent palace in the middle of the Argentine pampas.

Eduardo Williams, Zabaltegi Tabakalera award for “The rise of the human 3“, he thanked the presence of all the Argentine teams in San Sebastián to “give visibility to the problem of culture and cinema” in his country, because of “the neoliberal and fascist proposals that some candidates are presenting.”

The jury that decided the award was chaired by the French filmmaker Claire Denis and it was composed by the Spanish actress Vicky Luengo; the China Fan Bingbing; the Colombian producer, director and writer Cristina Gallego; the french photographer Brigitte Lacombe; the hungarian producer Robert Lantos and the German director Christian Petzold.