Cycle dedicated to the French filmmaker Patricia Mazuy.
One of the aims of the Tabakalera cinema is for people to discover filmmakers they have not been able to gain access to. Patricia Mazuy is a clear example of this because, unfortunately, her films have never been distributed in this country. They have never been shown in cinemas here. In 2022, the Gijón International Film Festival, the Márgenes festival and the Spanish Film Library brought her into the spotlight so that the public could discover her films. Now the opportunity comes to San Sebastian in the form of a retrospective.
It is curious because Patricia Mazuy’s career involves working alongside such well-known names as Agnès Varda, the Dardenne brothers and Isabelle Huppert, and recognition such as an award at the Cannes festival in 2000, but her own name is still relatively unknown. Patricia Mazuy began her career working with Agnès Varda, whom she met in Los Angeles when she was shooting the film Mur Murs (1981). Mazuy edited Varda’s film Vagabond in 1985. Four years later, she directed her first feature film Peaux des vaches (1989), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. A fiction film starring Sandrine Bonnaire and Jean-François Stévenin, it won a César nomination for Best First Film. Eleven years later, she made her second feature film, Saint-Cyr (2000), this time starring Isabelle Huppert. After directing a documentary, Basse Normandie, in 2004, it was another eleven years before her next fiction feature, Sport de filles (2011). The last few years have been Mazuy’s most prolific, as she has managed to direct three films in a very short time: Paul Sánchez est revenú! (2018), Bowling Saturn (2022) – in which one of the actors is her own son Achille Regianni – and La prisonnière de Bordeaux (2024), once again with Isabelle Huppert, which premiered at the last edition of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
It is not easy to define Mazuy’s films. Viewers will have the opportunity to see all her feature films and draw their own conclusions, but if we were to mention one characteristic before starting the voyage of discovery, it might be that she tends to present us with strong characters who often take their acting to the limits. A little initial clue to start the adventure.
Thursday 23 January, 19:00
Peaux de vaches, Patricia Mazuy, France, 1989, 90 min
Thursday 13 February, 19:00
Saint-Cyr, Patricia Mazuy, France, Germany, Belgium, 2000, 119 min
Thursday 27 February, 19:00
Sport de filles, Patricia Mazuy, France, Germany, 2011, 101 min
Thursday 20 March, 19:00
Paul Sanchez est revenu!, Patricia Mazuy, France, Belgium, 2018, 110 min
Saturday 22 March, 19:00
Bowling Saturn, Patricia Mazuy, France, Belgium, 2022, 104 min
Thursday 27 March, 19:00
La Prisonnière de Bordeaux, Patricia Mazuy, France, 2024, 108 min