Tommy Lee Jones Receives Donostia Award at San Sebastian

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain – Tommy Lee Jones picked up his Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award at San Sebastian late Thursday.

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Jones, who humbly fielded questions from the press earlier in the day about his luck at directing and the high from being recognized by your colleagues, thanked San Sebastian.

“I’m happy when I get to be a movie director. I have a visual life and I’m happy when I get to do it It’s hard to get those jobs,” Jones said at the news conference. “But I’ll start with my next project on March 25 in northeast New Mexico. It’s always a brave new world when I get behind the camera.”

Jones’ award came as the festival winds down and the industry turned its attention to the first Europe-Latin America Co-Production forum, which clocked two signed deals for trans-Atlantic financing, with Nicolas Pereda’s When the Horses Learned to Cry and Javier Fuentes’ El Elefante Desaparecido securing co-production agreements.

Horses, produced by Edgar San Juan, will be co-produced by Film Tank (Mexico), Litmus Films (Spain) and Ciné Sud Promotion (France).  Elefante, produced by Michel Ruben signed a co-production agreement with Spain’s Urban Sales and Distribution.

Seventeen projects made the cut to participate in the event, which featured parallel programming with seminars to address the “challenges and opportunities of new technologies for the production and distribution of independent films,” “fundings for co-production” and one-on-one meetings.

Also Thursday, the festival and Red Bull Mediahouse announced a new section that will be established at next year's edition that will focus exclusively on action sports, outdoor and adventure movies.

The Red Bull Mediahouse further announced Heroes by Nature: A series of monthly action sports movie events, taking place in selected cinemas across Europe, rolling out in 2013. Working with networks of different partners, each Heroes event is going to capture the audience by focusing on one adrenaline-pumping sport, like surfing, mountain biking, snowboarding, climbing or other disciplines, and explore the depth of these sports through a combination of short and full lengths film, with cast and crew present.