In the year 1962, Arthur Penn and Anne Bancroft showed The Miracle Worker at San Sebastian Festival’s Official Selection, thereby launching promotion of the film that would go on to bag the Oscar for its lead actress (Anne Bancroft) and for Patty Duke as best supporting actress. In fact, Anne Bancroft herself landed the San Sebastian Award for Best Female Performance at that 10th edition of the Festival. The document for this month of March shows us the actress behind the scenes at the Victoria Eugenia Theatre prior to collecting her award, smoking a cigarette under the watchful eye of other guests.

The role played by film festivals in promoting the films they host, and present is well known, as is the so-called “awards season”, whose main event lies in the Academy Awards, held this month and bestowed by the Hollywood Academy. The position occupied in the calendar by the San Sebastian competition, in late summer and early autumn, has led the Festival to be chosen for the international coming out of countless movies that have gone on to enter, and win, the race to the Oscars.

Films like Edward Berger’s Conclave (Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2025), Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (winner of Best Animated Feature Film in 2024) and Ben Affleck’s Argo (Oscar for Best Picture in 2012), all presented in San Sebastian Festival’s Official Selection, are illustrative and modern-day examples of this.

But this is not, as we can see from this month’s document, a phenomenon limited to recent history: movies such as Richard Fleischer’s 20 Leagues Under the Sea (1955), Oscar for Best Art Direction and Special Effects; David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1966), winner of the Oscars for Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Cinematography, Original Score and Adapted Screenplay; Anthony Harvey’s The Lion in Winter (1969), Oscar for Best Actress, Original Score and Best Actress in a Leading Role, Original Score and Adapted Screenplay; Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1970) and Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon (1972), Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (Gig Young) and Supporting Actress (Tatum O’Neal), respectively; Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II (1975), Oscar for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor, Art Direction and Original Score; Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Oscar for Best Original Score, Sound, Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects; Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985), Oscar for Best Costume Design; Brian de Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (Sean Connery); and Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (1995), Oscar for Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Makeup and Sound Effects Editing were also, amongst many other Academy Award-winning films, part of the Official Selection (both in and out of competition) at the San Sebastian event.