San Sebastian 2026

6 minutes ago

3 min read

all smiles, I love this job! Photo by Mikel Martinez, San Sebastian Festival.

Not an in depth post with my usual wacky stories, but we had a BRILLIANT year at San Sebastian 2026. In my role as the Nordic and UK delegate at the festival, I was proud of the amazing screenings for Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care (video here), Amanda Kernell's Brace Your Heart (my interview here) and Hans Petter Moland's Growth of the Soil in competition (and hey the jury loved these films as much I did!). Also in New Directors we introduced audiences to two amazing bold voices: Billy Lumby with Florid (catch it at LFF! Great interview here) and Marlene Emilie Lyngstad with Cute.

San Sebastian has one of the great filmgoing public audiences in Europe and seeing their applause brought me to tears time and again. Also I got to see Brad Pitt starring with a dog -- and Brad was truly a generous guest -- he stayed many extra days in town (not really a hardship but glad he's enjoying his life), and signed autographs for fans for hours upon hours.

I was also in town running our fifth-annual Creative Investors Conference, special shout out to my partner in crime Saioa Riba and CAA's David Taghioff). I say it every year but it really was our best-ever conference. Just look at this guest list (plus we had even more speakers!)

Elisa Alvares (Tower Peak Partners), Laura Austin-Little (Black Bear International), Efe Cakarel (MUBI), Maite Carpio Bulgari (Garbo Produzioni), Julio Chavezmontes (PIANO), Juan De Dios Larrain (Fabula & Pijama), Anders Erdén (Orogen Entertainment), Lorenzo De Maio (De Maio Entertainment), Elissa Federoff (Neon), Frédéric Fiore (Logical Pictures Group), Paul Getto (Animo Strategies), Jae Goodman (Superconnector Studios), Anita Gou (Kindred Spirit), Ron Halpern (Studiocanal), Phil Hunt (Head Gear Films), Ryan Kavanaugh (Acme AI & VFX ), Axel Kuschevatzky (Infinity Hill), Pauline Lamy (Why Not Productions), Lavaille Lavette (One Street Studios & Pan African Film Fund), Alexandra Lebret (Axio Capital & Together Fund), Vincent Maraval (Goodfellas), Liza Marshall (Hera Pictures), Teresa Moneo (Good Chaos), Matias Mosteirin (K&S Films), Adrien Nussenbaum (Yapluka / Palatio Films), Gary Raskin (Sherbourne Media), Dimitri Rassam (Yapluka / Chapter 2), Andy Roa (A24), Adele Romanski (Pastel), Andrea Scrosati (Fremantle), Rachel Shane (Madison Wells), Raj Singh (Media Capital Technologies), Lars Sylvest (Thank You Pictures), Rodrigo Teixeira (RT Features), Christine Vachon (Killer Films), Patrick Wachsberger (193), Michael Weber (The Match Factory & MUBI) and Rob Williams (Sumerian Pictures).

We heard so many smart conversations, had productive private meetings and defintiely also had some fun together. I feel truly lucky to work on an event of this calibre.

Truly, a GREAT edition of this festival but also a bittersweet one as we say goodbye to my bosses and friends Jose Luis Rebordinos and Lucia Olaciregui - the only silver lining is that they will have more time to hang out with me now.

And of course, there was lots of sunshine, a swim in the sea, seeing many friends, seeing a few films (holy moly, Josephine!), a trip to La Perla spa, and eating lots and lots and lots of pintxos.

Here we are on a pintxos crawl . Thanks to Christine Vachon for introducing us to the culinary legend who is Gabriella Ranelli.