San Sebastián's 2026 Lineup Takes Shape: Eisenberg, Cotillard, and a New Les Misérables Among Official Selection
Jesse Eisenberg's third film as director, a fresh Victor Hugo adaptation, and a Sámi reindeer drama are among six titles added to the 2026 San Sebastián Film Festival's Official Selection, according to Deadline.
The new entries bring the festival's competition roster — the section that competes for the Golden Shell, the top prize — to a sizeable field across two waves of announcements. San Sebastián, held in the Basque city of Donostia, runs 18–26 September for its 74th edition.
Eisenberg's The Debut stars Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti, placing the actor-turned-director back in a major festival competition after his 2024 film A Real Pain earned an Oscar nomination for its screenplay. Fred Cavayé takes on Victor Hugo with a new Les Misérables adaptation, while Amanda Kernell — the Sámi filmmaker whose Sámi Blood drew international attention in 2016 — returns with Garrat du váimmu (Brace Your Heart), about a young woman fighting to keep her family's reindeer herd alive.
Brazilian director Gabriel Martins brings Vicentina pede desculpas (On Behalf of My Son), his third feature. Bangkok-based director, screenwriter and cinematographer Ah Biao competes with Bian Jing (Border), and Tony Vahl makes her feature debut with Krux, inspired by true events about a small northeastern German village at the end of the Second World War.
The six titles revealed by Deadline join a group announced earlier by the festival's own newsroom. That prior wave, reported on 28 July, included seven films from Nicole Garcia, Pablo Larraín, Mike Leigh, Hans Petter Moland, Benjamín Naishtat, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, and first-time director Maha Harada — alongside two films named in earlier festival materials (San Sebastián Film Festival).
Garcia's 7:40 ce matin-là / Milo stars Oscar and Donostia Award winner Marion Cotillard alongside Théodore Pellerin, following a woman fresh out of prison who takes a waitress job at a café to get closer to a young boy. Leigh's Tender Loving Care features Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Kate O'Flynn and Alice Bailey Johnson. Larraín's entry, Mis muertos tristes / My Sad Dead — a series screened in feature-length format based on four Mariana Enríquez short stories about a woman who can see and hear the dead — stars Mercedes Morán, Dolores Fonzi and Carolina Álvarez.
Moland adapts Knut Hamsun's 1917 Nobel Prize-winning novel with Markens Grode / Growth of the Soil, set in northern Norway. Harada adapts her own novel An Unnecessary Man for her directorial debut Muyou no Hito / In My Father's Room, about a museum worker who receives a mysterious key unlocking her late father's old room. Roberto Bueso, competing for the Golden Shell for the first time, brings El mal padre, his third film, starring Eduard Fernández.
For a festival positioned between Venice and Toronto on the autumn calendar, the breadth of this lineup reads as deliberate: established names sharing competition slots with first-time directors, and literary adaptations sitting alongside stories rooted in Sámi, Brazilian, Thai and German contexts. The full programme will continue to fill out as the festival approaches its September opening.
