Mike Leigh, Joshua Oppenheimer, Gia Coppola and Edward Berger will vie for San Sebastian’s top Golden Shell this September. The festival features a main competition that is stronger than usual on both bigger-name directors and ‘A’ list stars, such as Tilda Swinton in Oppenheimer’s “The End,” Jamie Lee Curtis and Pamela Anderson in Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl” and the ensemble cast of Berger’s “Conclave” that includes Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini.
Bound for Toronto and Telluride before San Sebastián, Oppenheimer’s “The End” stars Swinton, George MacKay and Michael Shannon in what is described as a post-apocalyptic “Golden Age” musical. “Conclave,” from “All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger,” is a psychological thriller written by Peter Straughan, based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Robert Harris and starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow.
Leigh’s “Hard Truths” reunites the filmmaker with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who received an Oscar nomination for his 1996 drama “Secrets & Lies.” “The Last Showgirl” is a mother-daughter drama starring Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kiernan Shipka, Billie Lourd, Dave Bautista, and Brenda Song, with Anderson at a career crossroads when her Las Vegas show closes after a 30-year run.
The two Netflix Originals take in “El lugar de la otra,” the debut fiction feature of two-time Chilean Oscar nominee Maite Alberdi (“The Eternal Memory” and “The Mole Agent”), produced by Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín’s Fabula (“El Conde,” “Spencer”), and “The Man Who Loved UFOs,” a dramedy from Argentina’s Diego Lerman, turning on a cock-and-bull alien visitation scam in the 1980s.
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