San Sebastian to Close 2026 Edition with 'Le Faux Soir,' Roskam's Nazi-Press Resistance Thriller
Michaël R. Roskam's 'Le Faux Soir' will close the 2026 San Sebastian Film Festival in an out-of-competition slot, the festival announced on 20 August 2026 (The Hollywood Reporter).
The Belgian-French co-production recreates a real Second World War resistance operation in which Belgian underground fighters printed a fake edition of 'Le Soir' — a national newspaper the Nazis had seized and turned into a propaganda vehicle — mocking the occupier with satire. Some historians consider the stunt, carried out on 9 November 1943, the first-ever media hack (The Hollywood Reporter).
The European premiere at San Sebastian follows the film's world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier in the autumn. Both festivals sit on the industry calendar as key launch pads for autumn releases and awards campaigns; playing both back-to-back gives the film maximum exposure before distributors set their wider release dates.
The cast features Arieh Worthalter, Mélanie Thierry, Karim Leklou, Mara Taquin, Bouli Lanners, Julien Frison and François Damiens. The screenplay draws on the book 'Le "Faux" Soir, 9 novembre 1943' by Marie Istas (The Hollywood Reporter).
Roskam is no stranger to San Sebastian. He won the festival's jury prize for best screenplay in 2014 for 'The Drop,' a crime drama starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and James Gandolfini. His feature debut, 'Bullhead' (2011), earned an Oscar nomination for foreign-language film and put him on the international map. More recently, he directed the first three episodes of the Apple TV+ miniseries 'Black Bird' (2021), starring Taron Egerton, which received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
There is a quiet resonance in the assignment. Before he made films, Roskam worked as a journalist for the Dutch-language Belgian newspaper 'De Morgen.' 'Le Faux Soir' takes as its subject a moment when journalism itself became a weapon — a fake front page, printed in secret, that turned propaganda back on its authors.
The closing-night selection rounds out a festival lineup that San Sebastian had been building all week. Earlier, the festival unveiled Fatih Akin's 'Ghost Song' as its 2026 opening film, with 'Le Faux Soir' now set to bring the 74th edition to its close.
For audiences, the pairing of Roskam's press-world background with a story about the power — and the peril — of fake news in wartime offers a straight line from the director's own résumé to his subject. The festival runs in late September in the Basque coastal city of Donostia-San Sebastián.
