SAN SEBASTIAN: A Spanish filmmaker unveiled a new silent movie of Snow White, another non-talkie Oscar contender, at the San Sebastian Film Festival yesterday. Screening it at one of Europe’s top international film events, director Pablo Berger said it was developed by coincidence at the same as Michel Hazanavicius made last year’s silent Oscar-winner, The Artist.
“In France at the same time Hazanavicius had written a script of the same kind,” a movie with a musical soundtrack but no words, Berger told reporters at the festival.
“When I heard, about a week before the start of filming, that there was a film called ‘The Artist’ that had been a success at Cannes, it was a blow.”
Nonetheless, Berger’s film -- Blancanieves in Spanish -- has been selected as one of Spain’s contenders for the best non-English language film at next year’s Oscars.
Today the San Sebastian festival is to hand its lifetime achievement awards to US film star John Travolta and director Oliver Stone.
US film star Ben Affleck unveiled his new film as a director at the festival: a real-life tale of spies posing as filmmakers in revolutionary Iran.
“You would never believe the story if it weren’t based on real events,” he told reporters at the festival, one of Europe’s top international film gatherings.
A satirical thriller, his movie Argo recounts events of 1979, when US diplomats took refuge in the Canadian embassy in Tehran after revolutionaries took others hostage in the American one.
A CIA hostage rescuer, played by Affleck, plans for agents to pose as filmmakers shooting on location in Iran in order to rescue the diplomats -- aided by colourful Hollywood producers played by John Goodman and Alan Arkin.
Agencies
