MADRID (AFP)
Iraq and Afghanistan will be in focus at this year's 55th San Sebastian Film Festival, starting Thursday, where up-and-coming directors will vie for attention with established names.
A total of 16 films are competing for the coveted "Concha de Oro", or Golden Shell, award for best film awarded by a jury presided over this year by U.S. writer Paul Auster.
The Iraq conflict gets a high-profile billing with "Battle for Haditha" by British director Nick Broomfield, in the official competition section alongside 15 other works.
It will compete alongside Iranian director Hana Makhmalbaf's film "Buddha Collapsed out of Shame," the tale of a young Afghan girl's struggle to receive schooling.
Broomfield, who last year was in the Spanish Basque resort festival city with "Ghost," a drama about illegal Chinese immigration to Britain, this time comes back with an even more powerful effort with "Battle for Haditha."
The film offers a journey into a dark episode in the Iraq war with a close-up look at events in November 2005 in the town of Haditha, where an insurgents' attack on a U.S. Marine convoy killed a popular U.S. soldier, Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas.
Twenty-four Iraqis, many of them civilians including women and children, were killed in what has been described as a retaliatory attack by the U.S. soldiers, prompting widespread outrage and a legal investigation that has yet to conclude.
"It is a powerful film, which asks a lot of questions of filmgoers and it's a film which gets to grips with one of the burning topics of the day," Festival director Mikel Olaciregi said.
Makhmalbaf is just 18 and her "Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame," about a six-year-old Afghan girl struggling to learn the alphabet in a war-torn society, depicts how violence impacts on a country's children.
The September 20-29 festival is a top drawer event and as such will attract star names from across the Atlantic including Demi Moore, Samuel L. Jackson and Viggo Mortensen.
The San Sebastian International Film Festival is considered the most important Spanish international film festival and one of the most important film festivals in Europe. |
