The 21st edition of Nest, San Sebastian Festival’s international competition for shorts by film students, has selected three films of widely varying format and subject, from amongst the 350 submitted by 160 schools in 44 countries. The selected works come from Brazil, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the United States.
Organised by the San Sebastian Festival and Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Art, the Nest section screens the works of film students from all over the world, the moviemakers of today and tomorrow. As well as serving as a place to show and advise short films, Nest has the mission to provide a meeting point for students, filmmakers, industry professionals and the public: a space enabled by the Festival in which to hold conversations on the cinema and foster the crossover between training and the professional world.
The thirteen selected shorts will screen in the Tabakalera cinema from Monday 19 to Friday 23 September as part of a programme packed with activities; this year Nest will return to its usual format, the one it had before the pandemic, with masterclasses and social events, meaning that more than 60 film school students will gather in San Sebastian.
For the fourth year running, Nest will include a short film submitted by the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE), the school promoted by Gipuzkoa Provincial Council and with participation of the Festival, Tabakalera and the Filmoteca Vasca. The title of the film is Noizko basoa and it is directed by Mikele Landa Eiguren. The short film by a director from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication at the University of the Basque Country has also been selected: Erro bi, by Nagore Muriel Letamendia. This will be the first time in its 21 years of history that short films in the Basque language will have competed in Nest.
A jury made up of a recognised personality from the film world and students from the selected film schools will decide the Nest Award, coming with 10,000 euros for the director of the winning short.
Nest, one of the most important sections of the San Sebastian Festival within its strategy to promote new talents, celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. Since its creation in 2002, it has hosted more than 1,000 young moviemakers, around a hundred masterclasses and conversations with industry professionals (Céline Sciamma, Albertina Carri, Alexander Payne, Bertrand Bonello…), as well as having selected more than 350 short films. Considered to be the place where it all starts, Nest has shown the work of filmmakers including Jerónimo Quevedo, Kiro Russo, who have gone on to premiere their later works both at the San Sebastian Festival and at other events in the international circuit.
While the student meeting is being held, all the short films that have won awards to date will be screened in the Tabakalera Medialab Studio.
