Mike Leigh's ‘Tender Loving Care’ Wins Top Prize at San Sebastián

The 74th San Sebastián Film Festival wrapped tonight, and Mike Leigh walked away the big winner.

“Tender Loving Care," Leigh’s final film, took the Golden Shell, plus two more prizes: a Silver Shell for Best Leading Performance for Kate O'Flynn and the Best Screenplay award for Leigh himself. Not bad for a filmmaker who only made his San Sebastián competition debut two years ago with "Hard Truths."

"Tender Loving Care" follows Amy (O'Flynn) and Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson), best friends and London social workers nearing 40, over one week after Amy moves in with Rosie following a breakup. Between tough days on the job and wine-soaked evenings together, Amy's family faces a crisis as her father begins showing early signs of dementia. It's a gentle, plot-light portrait in classic Leigh style, and reportedly the 83-year-old director's final film.

This year's 17-film competition at San Sebastián was a strong one, with new work from Fatih Akin, whose "Ghost Song" opened the fest, Pablo Larraín, Nicole Garcia, Hans Petter Moland and Jesse Eisenberg. Curiously, Eisenberg's "The Debut" was completely shut out.

To the surprise of no one, hometown favorites Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (Los Javis) took the Audience Award for "La Bola Negra," their Spanish queer epic. It's quite a run for the film, which won the People's Choice Award at Toronto just a week ago, and topped the Telluride poll a week before that. Can it go all the way with the Oscars?

The second Audience Award, for Best European Film, went to "NAZA," the new documentary from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, which documents alleged Israeli AI bombing systems in Gaza.

For those less familiar, San Sebastián is one of a small group of festivals accredited by FIAPF as a competitive feature film festival, the "A-list" tier it shares with Cannes, Venice and Berlin. Its late-September slot, right after Venice and Toronto, makes it a key stop on the road to awards season.

Leigh's win should give "Tender Loving Care" a nice boost heading into the fall, and having seen the film, it absolutely deserves it.

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