José Luis Rebordinos, on 'Patria': "Without forgetting that ETA was a murderous and fascist gang, in Euskadi it was tortured"

"I am not willing to give in to blackmail wherever they come from

.

The ideology of José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastián Festival, could well be summed up in this phrase between resistance and simply the obvious.

The obvious does not always hold the stake of the interested.

Almost never, in fact.

The sentence of yore is worth the same to demonstrate the determination to celebrate the festival despite the pandemic and the temptation to move the screenings to the much safer virtual world;

that to keep a Woody Allen repudiated by much of Hollywood in the place of honor of the inauguration;

that, already put, to vindicate '

', the series about the ETA universe based on the novel by Fernando Aramburu, despite controversies and hasty judgments by "censors."

And so.

Indeed, the 68th edition of the contest that begins on Friday with the latest film from the veteran Brooklyn director, '

, will probably not only be the strangest but the most convinced of itself.

Back in May, when Cannes gave in to the pressure of data and confinement and finally announced its closure, San Sebastián was on the verge of becoming an inevitable collateral damage.

But he endured and that has led him, like almost all of us, to find himself face to face with the most elemental and oldest of questions: why being and not nothingness?

Or, in a less Aristotelian way,

"A festival", Rebordinos reasons,

because cinema is basically a collective act that is generated in community. Films cannot be judged correctly if they are seen on television, nor can their meaning be appreciated if there is no one. public discussion around them. A work of art that proposes something new requires a debate, a dialogue ... And that is only possible if we see each other's faces. "

And he continues to avoid dogmatism: "I'm talking about events such as San Sebastián, Cannes or Venice ... Then, of course, there may be festivals that program films from other festivals that can be entirely '

'".

The Toronto option is therefore ruled out, which, for the first time, and given its

format, will

coexist with Zinemaldia for a few days.

Be that as it may, the coronavirus has forced 20% fewer films this year compared to previous years.

That and a reduction of 'international stars' basically summarized in a list of three: Viggo Mortensen, who receives the Donostia Award, Matt Dillon, who directs'

, and Johnny Depp, who attends as producer of

.

The official competition section is made up of 13 films, of which only three are directed by a woman.

Among the selected works, those of the French

(

), the Japanese

(

, the Danish

(

') or the Spanish

('

').

Out of competition, there will be the productions of the aforementioned

,

(who closes the exhibition with

), the directorial debut of the named Viggo Mortersen ('

') or the series signed by

(

),

('

) or, instead of honor,

in charge of, the most anticipated, '

'.

For Rebordinos, the natural place for the adaptation of Fernando Aramburu's novel is San Sebastián.

The series' point of view is very interesting, always on the side of everyone's pain. This festival has always been on the side of showing all those works who have something to say about what has happened in Esukadi without dogmatism.

. That has happened, "he says, taking a second and addressing the thorny issue of the poster announcing the series where the image of an attack shared a place with that of a tortured ETA: "

'

' is essentially Realistic. What counts is real. We will never project a propagandist film no matter which side it comes from, but learning to understand each other so that what happened never happens again has to go through the fact that each one contributes their point of view.

sta.

And the more beyond the better. "

The last sticking point has to do with clarity in defending the decision, which is also a declaration of principles, to put Woody Allen in the most visible of settings.

Few times San Sebastián, the city, was portrayed with as much care as Vittorio Storaro's photography does.

The film is the culmination of a year that stopped the publication of the director's memoirs after the reactivation of the accusations of abuse by his son Ronan and all the actors and actresses who abjured him.

There are policemen who investigate and judges who judge. I am neither one thing nor the other. Definitely, I am not willing to give in to blackmail," he says.

Well that.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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