Rifkin's Festival
Short description
Rifkin's Festival follows Mort Rifkin, a New York film critic and former professor who travels with his wife Sue to the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. Sue works in film publicity and is accompanying a young French director, Philippe, whose presence stirs Mort's suspicions that her relationship with him goes beyond professional duties. At the same time, Mort becomes drawn to a Spanish doctor he meets in the city. The trip also pushes him to confront the writer's block that has kept him from finishing his first novel, as he reflects on his life through the films he loves. The couple's time at the festival becomes a test of their marriage amid the allure of the setting and of cinema itself.
Woody Allen directed the film from his own screenplay, working with producers Letty Aronson, Jaume Roures and Erika Aronson. It is the forty-seventh of the forty-eight films he has directed in chronological order, following A Rainy Day in New York and preceding Coup de chance. Wallace Shawn plays Mort, with Gina Gershon as Sue, Louis Garrel as Philippe and Elena Anaya as Jo Rojas. Steve Guttenberg and Enrique Arce also appear.
The film is a comedy with romantic elements, made as a co-production between Spain, Italy and the United States, and runs 92 minutes. It earned about 2 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.1 out of 10 from around 11,000 votes, and on TMDB the same 6.1 from roughly 476 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 5.2 out of 10 from 80 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- The scene recreating the chess game from Ingmar Bergman's film 'The Seventh Seal' (1957) was filmed on the same beach where some scenes from the TV series 'Game of Thrones' (2011-2019) were shot. Christoph Waltz stoically endured being in the sun (temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius) in a heavy black robe on the hottest day of the latter half of the 20th century.
- Filming was completed a week ahead of schedule. The last scene was shot on the morning of August 16th, and in the afternoon, a sale of costumes and props used in the film was held. The money raised was donated to a local charity that buys food for refugees.
- Sergi López played the role of an artist in the film. Over 130 paintings, as well as other materials (and, in particular, books) by local expressionist artist Juan Luis Goenaga, the father of actress Barbara Goenaga, were used in creating the set for his character's workshop.
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