Streaming ate the theatrical window, but it never touched the gatekeeping. Why Cannes, Venice and Berlin still decide what cinema we'll be watching a year from now — including the films that end up on a platform.
Read the essay →Two weeks after San Sebastián handed its jury to a room of practitioners, that room gave Mike Leigh the Golden Shell — and the Best Screenplay prize for a script built in rehearsal, not on the page.
The festival that spent thirty years refusing to rank films now hands its year-old main competition to the biggest auteur name in Asian cinema — and the choice tells you exactly what Busan wants to become.
Founded to find the director nobody knows yet, Zurich opens its 22nd edition leaning on the faces everyone already does — and the trophy for both carries the same name.
For its 74th edition, San Sebastián adds an official SGAE prize for best original music in competition — the rare festival that will now put a film's composer up for judgement alongside its director.
By putting Ira Sachs in the chair days before its 74th edition, San Sebastián tells you what kind of film it wants its Golden Shell to reward — and it is not the loud kind.
By handing its highest award to an actor whose filmography reads like a directory of difficult auteurs, San Sebastián quietly makes a claim about where authorship actually lives.