The festival opened its 74th edition with Fatih Akin’s Geister, while Werner Herzog drew the first major spotlight. The German filmmaker received the Donostia Award for a career spanning six decades and more than 70 films. The competition began with a dark story of love and loss.
Herzog’s honour defined the opening day. San Sebastián recognised a body of work shaped by extreme situations and personal obsessions, with the contradictions of human nature running through it. The 84-year-old director said the award made him proud, but his attention remained on the work ahead, not on counting his films or looking back.
The festival included Herzog’s new 109-minute film, Bucking Fastard, in its Donostia Award Screenings programme.
The festival’s basic competition has 17 productions vying for the Golden Shell, to be awarded at the closing ceremony on Saturday 26. The line-up includes Mis muertos tristes by Chilean director Pablo Larraín. Argentina is represented by Glaxo, while Brazil’s entry is Las disculpas de Vicentina.
Geister gives the competition an unusually intimate opening. A young woman named Farasha dies on the night she meets Faris, the love of her life. She then returns to him in dreams, where their relationship continues as a turbulent romance.
Akin filmed almost the entire production in black and white. The idea began with his son’s notion of friendship with a ghost; the death of Akin’s father gave it emotional direction. The director said he had been unable to attend the funeral in Turkey and had hoped to see his father in dreams for one last conversation.
That absence became the foundation for a story about grief and parenthood, with mortality shaping the lives of lovers who meet after death. The film places a private family experience at the centre of the festival’s opening competition entry, without relying on spectacle.
Naomi Watts will receive the second Donostia Award on Saturday. The British actress has twice been nominated for an Oscar for 21 gramos and Lo imposible. Her collaborators have included Alejandro González Iñárritu, J.A. Bayona, David Lynch, Peter Jackson and Clint Eastwood. The ceremony was scheduled for 19 September, accompanied by a screening of The Housewife; a separate gala was also set to be broadcast on La 2.
Brad Pitt is among the stars expected in San Sebastián, alongside Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Orlando Bloom, Ricardo Darín, Jeremy Irons, Rami Malek and Diego Luna. Their arrival will give the festival’s red carpet a broader international profile, while the films remain at the centre of the competition. Deadline reported that Pitt’s Heart of the Beast was also scheduled to screen out of competition, extending the star programme beyond opening night.
Latin American cinema has a large place in this year’s programme. The Horizontes Latinos section opens with Siempre soy tu animal materno by Costa Rican director Valentina Maurel, winner of the best actress award in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.
Later screenings include Ceniza en la boca by Mexican actor and filmmaker Diego Luna, about a mother and her two children who migrate to Spain, and La ilusión de un verano sin fin by Argentine director Alessandra Sanguinetti, which received an award at Locarno. Twelve films representing Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Paraguay are competing for the best Latin American film prize.
San Sebastián’s programme extends beyond its visiting stars. It brings films from Latin America to a major European platform and places Herzog’s long career beside Akin’s personal meditation on death and memory. The opening’s strongest material lies in cinema built around difficult human experiences, rather than celebrity attendance.
The official festival schedule placed Herzog’s press conference and Donostia Award ceremony on 18 September. Alongside Watts’s recognition, the programme gives the 17-film competition a dramatic centre and keeps Latin American cinema firmly in view.
