The San Sebastián International Film Festival (Donostia Zinemaldia in Basque, SSIFF in official English) likes to call itself the smallest of the great festivals. There's no official ranking, but it's true: while not quite at the level of Venice or Cannes, it commands enormous prestige, especially across the Spanish-speaking world. Now in its 72nd edition, it's the event that closes the summer festival season.
Like major festivals everywhere, the SSIFF works to make the experience as open and inclusive as possible. One way it serves deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences—who already receive subtitles at all screenings—is by extending the same access to gala ceremonies: opening night, closing night, lifetime achievement awards.
Since 2005, the festival has partnered with CESyA (Centro Español del Subtitulado y la Audiodescripción) to provide live subtitles in Basque, Spanish, and English. It's a coordinated effort involving screenwriters, producers, translators, stenographers, and specialized software—AccEvent and Mercurio. This means the entire audience can follow every moment of the ceremonies in real time, including all the spontaneous ones.
The top prize is the Concha de Oro, awarded to the best film in the official selection. This year's competition features several celebrated directors and eagerly awaited films. One of them, Conclave by Edward Berger, will surely generate serious discussion in Italy as well. Adapted from Robert Harris's novel, it offers audiences an inside look at something normally inaccessible: the election of a Pope. The film contains far more plot twists than would ever happen in reality, yet it pursues verisimilitude with considerable care. Still, it remains a political thriller that strips away the spiritual dimensions of its protagonist (Ralph Fiennes), which the novel explores with much greater nuance. Harris engages the inextricable conflict between politics and faith in ways the film cannot match.
For Spanish directors especially, an invitation to this festival is one of the highest honors. For Pilar Palomero, it's her second time; she returns with Los Destellos. Based on a story by Eider Rodriguez, it centers on that brief, crushing moment when the sick person knows recovery is no longer possible. Ramón (Antonio de la Torre) has little time left. Palliative care is all that remains. He's been separated from his ex-wife Isabel (Patricia López Arnaiz) for years, but when their daughter—a student away at school—persuades her, Isabel begins caring for him, both physically and emotionally.
The film tells nothing of their years together as a couple. That past no longer matters when you've chosen to give weight only to the present, free of resentment and regret. Although she carries the narrative, the dying man emerges as the more essential figure. In relation to him, everyone—even the ex-wife's new partner—finds their buried emotions rising to the surface.
The SSIFF has many sections beyond the main competition. In Latin American cinema, "Horizontes Latinos" carries particular prestige, showcasing the best work from Latino cultures worldwide. In Panamanian director Ana Endara's Querido Trópico, a Colombian immigrant becomes a caregiver to a wealthy Panamanian woman descending into irreversible senile dementia. As the nurse tends to her patient—and their bond grows increasingly tender—she carries her own unhealed wound: she has never become a mother.
As one woman slowly sheds the harshness of old age and returns to the softness of childhood, the other finds space to express the maternal gentleness she's long wished to offer. Where these two unfinished identities intersect—one disappearing, the other sustained by too many dreams—a point of contact forms that transcends geography, age, and class. It emerges only in a brief, genuine moment of sweetness, something no one else can understand or access.