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With these stories, we aim to pull back the camouflage that Big Tech uses to obscure their connection with oppressive governments, and to highlight cases of technological authoritarianism — and resistance — around the world.
François Picard is pleased to welcome Kyrylo Berkal, Deputy Commander of Ukraine's Third Army Corps, He sees Ukraine’s struggle centred on human potential, adaptation and will. While Ukraine is outnumbered, outgunned and sometimes outflanked, their answer is to make human initiative a weapon: giving soldiers and sergeants room to innovate, developing technology from the tactical level upward, and trying to outthink their adversary. Berkal says that Operation Vivaldi embodies that philosophy.
The premise of Argentina’s Ricardo Darin’s latest feature, “Therapy Done Right” (Lo dejamos acá”), world premiering at the San Sebastian Festival, is deceptively simple: A pragmatic psychoanalyst loses faith in conventional methods and starts pushing the boundaries with his patients. Everything seems to be going well until a writer (played by Diego Peretti), struggling with […]
François Picard welcomes Scott Anderson, journalist, war correspondent and best-selling author of "King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah and the Revolution That Forged Modern Iran". For Anderson, there is a striking parallel between 1979 and 2026: Washington's persistent misreading of Iran, and the consequences that follow.
Patrick Vieira and Herve Renard are among the high-profile managerial arrivals as the qualification campaign for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations gets under way.
François Picard is pleased to welcome Eoghan Gilmartin, an award-winning investigative journalist and part of The Guardian team whose investigation examined links between IPCC authors and Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including Saudi Aramco. Their findings take us to the intersection of climate science, political and economic interests, and institutional credibility, and into the politically consequential terrain of climate mitigation: how societies decide to respond to climate change.
François Picard is pleased to welcome Washington Post national security reporter Adam Taylor. The Forbidden Stories consortium, involving France 24 and 25 other media outlets, has spent six months investigating the thousands of people abruptly deported from the United States to third countries, amid concerns over due process and their ability to challenge their removal. The investigation examines how the Trump administration has made deportation a major focus of both US immigration and foreign policy.
The Basque Country has become an increasingly attractive place to make films and television. In Bizkaia alone, audiovisual employment rose 50.5% between 2014 and 2024, while the number of companies linked to the sector climbed from 284 to 448. In 2025, the Bilbao Bizkaia Film Commission supported 219 shoots with an estimated economic impact of […]
For a new generation of Basque filmmakers coming into focus at San Sebastián, stories often begin with something unresolved: an argument a child cannot remember, the working lives buried in an industrial landscape, a language whose influence reaches beyond the words spoken on screen. “My films grow from spending time with people and places, allowing […]
AI watchdogs, virtual production tools and carbon-tracking platforms are among the technologies heading to San Sebastian this year, as the festival’s Zinemaldia Startup Challenge unveils a 10-strong lineup drawn from Spain and across Europe. The competition, launched in 2019 to spotlight emerging tech with applications for film and the wider audiovisual business, received 68 submissions […]
German voters have delivered a fresh setback to Chancellor Friedrich Merz in two key regional elections.
One of the major industry narratives at this year’s San Sebastián Festival, running Sept. 18-26, will be the presentation of SETT, the venture capital fund of Spain’s Ministry for Digital Transformation.SETT director general Javier Ponce and its audiovisual director María Coronado deliver a practical guide to Spain’s governmental investment drive powering up companies in Spain: […]
A clash over music, politics and Palestine is putting freedom of expression in the spotlight. Macklemore’s outspoken support for Palestinians has sparked a backlash around Ed Sheeran’s US tour, raising a bigger question: should artists be expected to take a political stand, or are they equally free to stay silent? France 24’s Gavin Lee is joined by Dr Adam Behr, Reader in Music, Politics and Society at Newcastle University, to discuss the controversy.
Is there a resolution on Greenland? President Trump’s pressure campaign began in December 2024, right after he won re-election, when he began talking about the need for U.S. ownership and control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Portugal’s preeminent Queer Lisboa – International Queer Film Festival kicked off Friday with a vast program showcasing the latest in LGBTQ cinema, from established filmmakers to new voices, and a look back at the underground counterculture and revolutionary works of activist filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic. Lisbon’s […]
“The Blind Ants” (“Inurri Itsuak”), the third feature by director Igor Legarreta (“All the Moons,” “When You Stop Loving Me”), had it world premiere on Sept. 18 at the 74th San Sebastián International Film Festival. Part of the Zinemira section, which is dedicated to Basque productions, the film is competing for the Irizar Award for […]
Recent raids at luxury hotels and a wider crackdown on food companies have renewed the debate about food-safety standards and enforcement in India.
Over 2019-25, annual Catalan government general cinema funding soared from €12.5 million ($14.4 million) in 2019 to €30.2 million ($34.8 million) in just specific support lines. Now, however, the films that are being made are also getting bigger, as a new generation of filmmakers and TV creatives emerged over the last decade raise their game […]
Barcelona’s soccer players packed out Spain’s FIFA World Cup winning team. Now Catalonia, the northeast region of Spain counting on Barcelona as its capital, accounts for a very significant chunk of the Spanish films playing this year’s San Sebastián Festival, one of its principal draws. Some 150 Catalan companies, no less, will be in San […]
François Picard is pleased to welcome investigative journalist Emanuel Maiberg, Co-founder of 404 Media. As we embark on AI's uncharted waters, Maiberg has made a most unexpected discovery:: the mass acquisition, dismemberment and scanning of rare books for use as training data. His investigation reveals a globalised and deliberately opaque supply chain in which books purchased through anonymous marketplaces can ultimately arrive at large-scale scanning facilities, where their bindings are removed so that pages can be processed at great speed.
