Film professionals gathered on Tuesday to stage a protest supporting the Argentine film industry, a prime target of government austerity measures including slashed subsidies and mass layoffs in the country’s national film institute (INCAA for its Spanish initials).

The demonstration took place at the stairs of the Kursaal Auditorium, the festival’s main theater, with dozens of film professionals, jury members, and festival organizers holding a huge Argentine flag. 

“The management of the San Sebastian Film Festival would like to show its solidarity with the Argentine film industry in the face of the exceptional situation it is experiencing with the paralysis of many of its projects, the hollowing out of INCAA’s content, and the measures that this government is taking that threaten the development not only of its film industry but also of other expressions of its culture,” said a statement read by festival director José Luis Rebordinos. 

Rebordinos is a fervent critic of President Javier Milei and an outspoken defender of the Argentine film industry, which he described as “one of the most important in Latin America, showing a positive image of the country and being an economic engine for it.”

Protesters included actors Leonardo Sbaraglia (Puan, The Man Who Loved UFOs) and Daniel Hendler (Petite Fleur), Ibsen Award-winning director Lola Arias, former Mar del Plata film festival president Fernando Juan Lima and Argentine Film Academy president Hernán Findling, among many others.

In the statement, Rebordinos also said the San Sebastian Film Festival — which this year is screening 16 Argentine films, as well as a dozen film projects in its industry promotion sidebars — “cannot remain on the sidelines of the dismantling of a national film industry by a government that, in addition, justifies a military dictatorship that murdered thousands of its citizens.” 

The gathering coincided with the Official Selection screening of Netflix’s Argentine production The Man Who Loved UFOs, directed by Diego Lerman, Arias’ Reas, and the international premiere of the documentary Traslados. The documentary investigates the death flights conducted by the Argentine military dictatorship in the 1970s to execute thousands of its victims. The screening features an introduction and Q&A with the film crew, including director Nicolás Gil Lavedra and producer Zoe Hochbaum.

The San Sebastian Film Festival also announced they will partner with the Malaga Film Festival to screen six films with Spanish production in Buenos Aires from November 27 to December 1. The same films will be shown at Ventana Sur, Latin America’s biggest film business event, which was moved from Argentina to Uruguay due to the INCAA budget cuts.