Fest names New Director line-up

Forming one half of the fest's Zabaltegi-Open Zone sidebar, most pics are largely unseen on the fest circuit, adding a sense of genuine discovery to the section. As in 2003, there's a strong emphasis on European titles, but others hail from Latin America, New Zealand, Canada and Hong Kong.

Possible standouts include Ahmet Ulucay's "Boats Out of Watermelons," which delighted critics on its way to the top national prize at the Intl. Istanbul Film Festival in April, New Zealand helmer Brad McGann's emotive "In My Father's Den," where a son returns home for his father's funeral, and pics which received completion finance from San Sebastian/Toulouse's increasingly high-cache Films in Progress showcase: Argentinian Nicolas Tuozzo's "Proxima salida," about five laid-off railroad workers and their sons' efforts to better their lot, and "La sombra del caminante," (The Wandering Shadows), 23-year-old Colombian Ciro Guerra's quietly out-there graduation buddy movie involving, remarkably, a one-legged man and a friend whose job is to carry people around on his back.

A substantial number are new directors pics with Swiss Bettina Oberli's dour unemployment drama "North Wind," Spaniard Pablo Malo's noirish son-in-search-of-his father roadster "Cold Winter Sun," and German Rouven Blankfeld's "Graven Upon Thy Palm," about a put-upon wife. All these pics turn on domestic or family relations, as a metaphor or not for wider social tensions.

In "Uno," the directorial deb of Norwegian actor Askel Hennie, a son's life is turned upside down by his father's death; "Beba's Live-In," from Argentina's Jorge Gaggero charts the fall from grace of a hoity-toity Argentine bourgeois, played by Norma Aleandro ("The Son of the Bride"), against the background of the country's economic woes.

Violence - ethnic, criminal or psycho - forms a further leitmotif, whether in David Grieco's Russian serial killer thriller "Evilenko" toplining Malcolm McDowell, Hong Kong crimeworld thriller "Jiang Hu" from Wong Ching Po, "The Revealing Night" by Burkina Faso's Fanta Regino Nacro, turning on warring tribes in contempo Africa, or Amma Asante's "A Way of Life," which delves into the social origins of a violent racial crime.

The new directors competition is rounded up by "Innocence," from France's Lucile Hadzihalilovic, a school-set mystery film adapted from a tale by Frank Wedekind, and Canadian Daniel MacIvor's "Wilby Wonderful," a choral comedy about only apparently uneventful small island life.

The San Sebastian Festival has already announced three official competition titles which are also eligible for the new directors plaudit: from China, Xu Jinglei's tale of frustrated love, "A Letter From a Unknown Woman," based on Stefan Zweig's classic novel; Korean Song Il-gon's noirish murder mystery "Spider Forest;" and the Paul Greengrass scripted and produced "Omagh," an analysis of the terrorist outrage, helmed by Pete Travis.