José Luis Rebordinos Reflects On His Final Year At San Sebastián: “What Surprises Me The Most Is How Much The Festival Has Grown”

As the San Sebastián International Film Festival kicks into gear this weekend, it will be a bittersweet moment for José Luis Rebordinos. The longtime festival director is stepping down after what will be his 17th edition this year with deputy director Maialen Beloki taking over in January 2027.

“Maialen is a highly qualified professional with an in-depth knowledge of the festival,” Rebordinos tells Deadline. “She has been part of the team for seventeen years, serving as deputy director for the last eleven of those. I can’t think of anyone better suited to the role.”

While assured the festival is in good hands for its next chapter, Rebordinos says there are three things of which is he is most proud: “First there is the growth we have created in the industry activities, the second is that we have made it into a festival that works all year round with our school of cinema and residential projects and the third is the archive.”

Indeed, San Sebastián has increasingly ramped up its industry activity during Rebordinos’ tenure and the Spanish event is now considered the premiere hub for connecting Europe’s film industry to Latin American cinema and filmmaking talents. In the past, the festival had supported early works of filmmakers such as Brazil’s Walter Salles to Argentina’s Daniel Burman whose respective early works Foreign Land and A Chrysanthemum Bursts in Cincoesquinas both screened at the festival. Rebordinos has built on that with sections such as its Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, which started in 2012, and its Works in Progress LatAm, which was launched in 2020.

In 2015, the festival started its Ikusmira Berriak residency program in partnership with the Tabakalera International Center for Contemporary Culture and Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE). Filmmakers to emerge from that ecosystem include Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes with his feature The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (La misteriosa mirada del flamenco), and Gabriel Azorín with his feature Last Night I Conquered the City of Tebas (Anoche conquisté Tebas). Céspedes’ project premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025 where it took a top prize in Un Certain Regard while Azorín’s film premiered at Venice the same year.

Since 2018, San Sebastián has also worked closely with EQZE on Artxiboa, a historical digital and physical archive of the festival that is dedicated to preserving and sharing seven decades of the festival’s history. It contains more than 15,000 paper documents, 17,000 photographs, press dossiers, journals and festival posters dating from the festival’s founding in 1953 to the present.

In 2022, San Sebastián teamed up with CAA Media Finance to launch an annual Creative Investors’ Conference, which runs during the festival and has seen the attendance of major international players such as CAA’s Roeg Sutherland, Goodfellas founder Vincent Maraval, Neon’s Tom Quinn and Mediawan’s Elisabeth d’Arvieu,

“We have more and more people attending each year and it’s become incredibly successful,” says Rebordinos. “Business agreements have taken place here and it’s important that we have a relaxed atmosphere to support this. We are a smaller festival for a reason. We don’t want to be a very big festival. We want to be a human festival for industry activities. We are not a market – it’s impossible for us. We are a little city and a little festival but sometimes it’s good to be smaller.”

Maraval, a longtime supporter of San Sebastián, notes that Rebordinos helped propel the festival “to another dimension.”

“His sense of hospitality and his taste positioned San Sebastián in the top three international festivals,” says Maraval. “He knew how to take advantage of all of the assets of this beautiful city and make the festival unique.”

He continues: “I won’t miss him because he became a friend and my friendship won’t stop because he is no longer in charge. We will continue our cinema discussion around a great meal, and I hope I will still benefit from his advice like when he told me to look at Los Javis’ work. His job is perhaps over but his taste remains.”

Sutherland agrees noting that Rebordinos “has turned the festival into an international destination.”

“Like Venice, San Sebastián is a launching pad for awards pictures, as well as a celebration of Spanish cinema and putting it at the forefront of our minds,” says the CAA exec. “In the last several years, he established a conference that brings together like-minded voices to address the needs of our industry and find solutions for the future and preservation of cinema.”

Spanish producer Marisa Fernández Armenteros, whose film Sundays won the Golden Shell for Best Film at the festival last year, says: “Rebordinos is, above all, a hopeless optimist. I still remember the 2020 edition during the pandemic. Everything was being canceled and Rebordinos would call us to say, ‘Between optimism and pessimism, it is better for me to be an optimist. We’ll make it happen. There will be a festival.’ And he did.

“I will always be grateful to him for calling me, whether it was to share good news or bad. He has always faced up to things, understanding that it is part of his responsibility. And the longer I work in this industry, the more I value that attitude. I have seen him quietly support directors and producers with their first films, as well as projects from Latin America that were stuck in financing limbo. And always, quietly, behind the scenes.”

Rebordinos says he’s not leaving the industry completely and plans to consult with other festivals down the line on “matters relating to Spanish and Latin American cinema.”

“But I won’t be on the front line,” he says. “Rather, I will always be working in support of others.”

The 74^th San Sebastián International Film Festival takes place September 18-26, 2026.

Zac Ntim contributed to this report.