The San Sebastián Film Festival has set its New Directors lineup, with Saoirse Ronan‘s Bad Apples set to open the strand.

Filmmakers across the world including from China, Turkey, Denmark, India, Costa Rica, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. will present their first and second feature films in the section that spotlights emerging talent. They will all compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award.

Irish star Ronan stars in Bad Apples, described as a biting satire with a thriller aftertaste that will open the section. Directed by Jonatan Etzler, the film tells the story of a teacher dealing with a conflictive 11-year-old pupil. The U.K. production is the second movie from its director, writer of the prize-winning short film Swimmer and of the feature film One More Time (2023). 

White Flowers and Fruits, the debut feature film from Yukari Sakamoto will close the section. The movie is set in a Christian all-girls boarding school, where the suicide of a popular student leaves everyone shaken, and particularly one of the new boarders, who has the ability to see ghosts.

Following her recognition for short film If You Knew and her directing work on the BBC series Mood, British filmmaker Stroma Cairns turns to feature film with The Son and the Sea. Written by Cairns herself and her mother, producer Imogen West, the film follows the travels of two friends on Scotland’s north east coast, where they discover a connection that goes beyond words.

The Kurdish-Turkish filmmaker Seyhmus Altun will show his debut film As We Breathe, which participated in last year’s WIP Europa with the working title of Memento non mori. This Turkey-Denmark co-production follows the changes suffered by a family from a rural Anatolian town during a relentless fire.

Also included in the lineup is Tsao Shih-Han’s Before the Bright Day, John Skoog’s Redoubt, Emilie Thalund’s Weightless and Kim Torres’ debut If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night. See the full list of films set for the New Directors strand here.

Last week, organizers unveiled that new feature films from Alice Winocour, Arnaud Desplechin, Kentaro Hirase and Yutaro Seki, Agnieszka Holland and Milagros Mumenthaler will compete in San Sebastian’s official selection.

Winocour, who won the special jury prize at San Sebastián with Proxima in 2019, will return to the competition with her fifth film, Couture, a French American co-production starring Angelina Jolie and Louis Garrel set in the fashion world.