Werner Herzog at the 2026 San Sebastian Film Festival Courtesy of Getty German director, screenwriter and producer Werner Herzog touched on the Pyrenees and poetry as he picked up San Sebastian Film Festival‘s most prestigious honor Friday night in what was a politically charged opening ceremony.
Herzog was recognized with the coveted Donostia Award at the Kursaal Theatre in northern Spain, with a raucous standing ovation from his fellow European creatives.
The filmmaker is screening his latest feature Bucking Fastards in San Sebastian, in which Kate and Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson all star. Bloom presented Herzog with the award, prompting the German to say on stage: “What an honor to receive it from the very hands of Orlando Bloom. He’s a living legend at his young age already. He is a treasure of cinema.”
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“I’m here standing in front of you, not as a foreigner,” he continued. “I’ve had a connection to you, the Basque people, through an early film of mine — [1972’s] Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” said Herzog, explaining that he traveled — on foot — “many, many years ago” from the Cannes Film Festival up into the Pyrenees mountain range. It was more than 1,000 kilometers, said the director. “But I must confess, I ended up in Biarritz,” he laughed, “not San Sebastian.”
However, his experience interacting with those from the Basque Country has stayed with him. Herzog, who also directed Fitzcarraldo (1982), Grizzly Man (2005) and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), said: “I met your people. I met Basque people in the mountains, and I was always intrigued.” He said he follows Spain’s national poetry competition closely: “I feel like as if I belong here. It is a country of poetry. It’s a country of poets, and I receive this here from the poets. Thank you very much.”
The opening ceremony was marked by political declarations, with the evening’s hosts Fariba Sheikhan and Mariona Terés telling the crowd: “We join the myriad of voices calling for an end to genocide, like the one happening in Gaza. […] And we stand in solidarity with the directors of the film NAZA, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who have been threatened by the Israeli government,” they continued to thunderous applause. Last year, the San Sebastian Film Festival called for an “immediate ceasefire” in the region as Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and his government subjected the Palestinian people to what the festival called “unimaginable massacres.”
Abraham and Szor’s NAZA, featuring testimony from 24 Israeli military officers outlining the systems and protocols they allege Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza, was one of the biggest breakout successes of Venice and set a new record for the longest standing ovation at its Lido premiere. Abraham and Szor won the Special Jury Prize at Saturday’s Venice Film Festival awards but have faced scrutiny since its debut, including from Israel’s culture minister Miki Zohar, who threatened to revoke the pair’s Israeli citizenship.
The presenters also emphasized the need to put an end to “unilateral breaking of international law, to colonialist looting, to sexual violence and to the cruel wars that systematically violate human rights.”
The 2026 San Sebastian International Film Festival runs Sep. 18-26 and opened Friday with Fatih Akin’s haunting film Ghost Song. The movie — heavily influenced by the award-winning director’s relationship with anime and manga — follows two students whose love-at-first-sight connection is cut abruptly short when one of them dies. Read The Hollywood Reporter‘s conversation with Akin about the opener here.
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