Maialen Beloki has been appointed director of Spain’s San Sebastián Film Festival. Beloki, who has served as one of the deputy directors of the San Sebastián Film Festival from 2016, will take over from José Luis Rebordinos in January following 2027.
Rebordinos has made public his desire to step down as the San Sebastián director after this year’s edition, ending 16 years at its helm, making him San Sebastian’s longest serving director. During that time, the Festival has enjoyed a remarkable stability and growth in prestige, industry initiatives and attendance and international impact and partnerships, such as the Proyecta project showcase at Ventana Sur, organized with the Cannes Festival’s Marché du Film.
Though Rebordinos’ departure was known, his successor was not. Beloki has been unanimously selected by San Sebastian’s executive board following an open call for candidates launched on March 4.
Beloki knows the festival inside out. Her appointment marks most likely continuity, at least for the short-term at the festival, in that Beloki was actively engaged in helping to spearhead key initiatives at San Sebastián, such as its transformation from a one-off event in September into a year-round ecosystem, embodied in the Z365 initiative focusing on what the Festival described Monday as the development of new talent (Ikusmira Berriak residency program and Nest shorts showcase), education (the Elias Querejeta Zine Ezkola, for instance) and the generation of knowledge and critical thinking around cinema, embodied, for example, in the Artxiboa project.
A graduate of the University of Navarra, where she studied audiovisual communication, Beloki received a PhD (Cum Laude) in film theory, analysis and documentation from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). She also serves on the academic board of San Sebastián’s Elias Querejeta Zine Ezkola where she also lectures.
Leave a Reply