Roberto Bueso's El mal padre received a warm response at its official competition screening at this year's San Sebastián festival. The family drama now enters the final stretch with serious prospects for the awards ceremony next Saturday.
Presented on 22 September 2026 in the official competition of the 74th Festival de San Sebastián, the film turns a Christmas gathering into a sharp look at absent parenthood, family resentment and the chance of repairing damaged relationships.
The story follows Santiago Balmes, played by Eduard Fernández. An acclaimed academic and writer, he falls ill and brings his three estranged children back to the family home where they spent their childhood summers.
The reunion exposes the cost of the years Balmes spent putting himself above his family. His charisma does not erase the damage, and the film refuses to portray either the father or his children as entirely innocent.
That balance is the film's basic strength. Bueso wrote the screenplay with his regular collaborator Óscar Díaz Cruz. Together, they built the drama around pain and anger, with silence and moments of humour.
The house in the Comunidad Valenciana is more than a setting. It becomes the place where old reproaches and nostalgia surface over shared meals, with the father's friends and relatives present.
Fernández carries the central conflict with an intentionally uncomfortable performance. Balmes can be unpleasant and self-absorbed, yet remains recognisable as a man trying to control a family he has repeatedly neglected.
Fernández has described the film's tone as a difficult balance between silence and speech, humour and tragedy. He has also said it resembles life because personal histories shape every relationship.
The role brings Fernández back to a festival where he has already won major recognition. He won the Concha de Plata for best actor a decade ago for El hombre de las mil caras. He returned to the Zinemaldia in 2025 to receive the Premio Nacional de Cinematografía.
A second acting prize is now a realistic possibility after the response to his latest work. EFE reported Fernández's description of the film as a difficult balance between silence and words, and between humour and tragedy, a combination he said makes the story resemble real life.
El mal padre is Bueso's third feature film and his first competition entry for the Golden Shell at San Sebastián.
The children bring different kinds of family anxiety into the story. Alberto, the youngest, is played by Adam Jezierski. He is facing the prospect of becoming a father and is unsure whether he knows how to take on that responsibility.
His older sister, played by Meritxell Calvo, wants children but has been unable to have them. She begins to question whether she should keep trying.
Her resemblance to Balmes sharpens the conflict. She has inherited his personality and his difficulty with love.
The family history becomes even more complicated when Balmes's second family joins the reunion. He left his first wife after having three children with her. He later had another daughter, who studies in Boston and arrives as a pampered outsider.
Her presence triggers jealousy in her half-sister and forces the old family structure into the open.
The cast also includes Cristina Plazas and Francesco Carril. Festival coverage by RTVE and Academia de Cine has placed the film among the impressive Spanish contenders in the 2026 official competition.
Bueso previously directed La banda and Llenos de gracia, presenting both films in the festival's parallel Made in Spain section.
His new film enters the official competition while retaining his focus on emotionally exposed characters. The wider Spanish cinema programme has also drawn attention through another festival story centred on Penélope Cruz.
Fernando Bovaira produced the film again and had Fernández in mind for the leading role. El mal padre was filmed entirely in the Comunidad Valenciana.
EFE reported that its cinema release is scheduled for 20 November 2026, giving the film a clear path beyond the festival.
Its subject is intimate, but the conflict is easy to recognise: the damage caused when parenthood is treated as less impressive than personal ambition.
El mal padre works best when it avoids easy judgement. Its characters speak from years of pain and anger, yet the film leaves room for repair.
That helps explain the response in San Sebastián. The family drama offers no simple lesson; Fernández and Bueso have turned an uncomfortable domestic conflict into a precise Spanish competition film with a credible place in the palmarés.
