A career tribute can also open the door to a work that has not yet entered history. On 18 September 2026, Werner Herzog received a Donostia Award at the opening night of the 74th San Sebastian Film Festival. The German filmmaker also presented his new feature, Bucking Fastard. The event runs until 26 September and lists 263 films from 47 countries. Within that broad programme, pairing an honorary distinction with a recent screening raises a simple question: how can we see the film of the present without allowing it to disappear behind the director’s reputation? The answer requires more than another account of an illustrious career.
The Donostia Award recognises a journey
The festival’s release confirms that Herzog received the first Donostia Award of this edition at the Kursaal during its opening ceremony. The distinction honours a career; it is not a verdict on Bucking Fastard. That difference is essential. Lifetime awards sometimes compress decades of work into a single image or a handful of familiar titles. They recall an artist’s place in world cinema, but can also obscure what that artist is attempting today. Screening a new film alongside the presentation of the award gives audiences a chance to test the tribute against a specific piece of work.
According to the festival’s official introduction, Herzog’s career spans six decades and roughly 80 films. Extreme landscapes, determined figures and shifting boundaries between documentary and fiction often appear in descriptions of his work. Yet a filmography of that size cannot be reduced to a formula. A festival that welcomes the living filmmaker rather than only his legend creates room to notice continuities, departures and perhaps surprises. A new screening is therefore not a decorative addition to the ceremony. It puts the story constructed by an honorary award into contact with a work that must still be viewed on its own terms.
Two sisters at the heart of Bucking Fastard
The festival’s listing introduces Jean and Joan Holbrooke, sisters so close that they speak in unison, love the same man and share their dreams. The story also examines how the outside world responds to their bond, including the courts, the press and people who seek either to help or to exploit them. This is an unusual premise, not an invitation to diagnose the characters from a synopsis. Viewers still need to discover how Herzog films their relationship and how much space he gives the women’s perspective in a story that other people are eager to interpret. That question matters more than the novelty of the premise alone.
The production is listed as American and Irish, with a running time of 109 minutes. Rooney Mara and Kate Mara appear in the cast alongside Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson. These details identify the work presented in San Sebastian, but they are not enough to categorise it. The title, the sisters’ extraordinary closeness and the scrutiny directed at them could support very different readings. Editorial care means reporting what the festival has announced while leaving the film itself to demonstrate what it does with those ingredients. A cast list is not a review, and a synopsis is not the experience of a screening.
An opening within a larger festival
San Sebastian is more than the setting for one career award. Its 74th edition is showing films from 47 countries over nine days, according to its announcement. The competition’s opening film is Fatih Akin’s Geister / Ghost Song, while Bucking Fastard is listed among the screenings associated with the Donostia Award. Treating these as identical slots would flatten the programme’s structure. A ceremony draws attention; the festival’s sections tell a wider story of competing films, emerging voices and professional conversations continuing long after the red carpet clears. The distinction helps audiences understand what each event within the festival actually represents.
The festival also says that its opening ceremony spoke in defence of human rights and freedom of expression. This public dimension reminds us that festivals are not merely machines for distributing images or prizes. They are places where artists, audiences and institutions decide what to make visible. It would be too much to treat every film as a direct response to statements made at a ceremony. Still, context influences how a screening is received, particularly when a director as established as Herzog appears alongside works much less familiar to the general public. Attention should be wide enough to accommodate both.
Watching the present, not only the honours
An honorary prize can create curiosity rather than close a judgement. It encourages us to revisit older films, but also to assess new ones without demanding that they reproduce a myth. For Bucking Fastard, the question will be whether the perspective on the two sisters holds its own under the weight of its director’s signature. Performance, editing, sound and narrative construction will matter more than labels already attached to his career. The festival provides a setting for discovery; it does not itself supply a finished critical reading. That task belongs to viewers and critics after they have seen the work.
For B-EMPIRE, the news from San Sebastian lies in this coexistence of past and present. Herzog receives recognition grounded in the length of his work, while his new film must still encounter audiences and interpretations of its own. The confirmed facts are the Donostia ceremony, the screening and the festival setting. The lasting reception of Bucking Fastard remains open. That is precisely what makes the moment interesting: an honoured career does not end the possibility of being surprised by a film, or the right to discuss it freely. A tribute is most useful when it sends us back into the cinema with our eyes open.