San Sebastian To Fete Pedro Almodóvar’s Longtime Producer Esther García With Career Achievement Award

Veteran Spanish producer Esther García, a longtime collaborator of Pedro Almodóvar, will be handed a Donostia Award for career achievement at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

The festival has said the award was timed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of El Deseo, the production company Pedro Almodóvar launched with his brother, Agustín, which García joined in 1986. García has been a secretary, production assistant, and producer at the company. She has worked on every film directed by Almodóvar since Matador (1986). Her enormous body of work also includes Pim, pam, pum… ¡Fuego! (Pedro Olea), THE YEAR OF THE LIGHTS (Fernando Trueba, 1986), The funniest game (Emilio Martínez Lázaro, 1988), and, More Recently, Olive Laxes’s 2025 Cannes Title Syrup.

Amongst the myriad awards received by García are the National Cinematography Award, which she received in San Sebastián in 2018, the Silver Fotogramas in 2019, and six Goya Awards, three as the production director and three as a producer.

Elsewhere, the festival announced today that its 2025 poster will feature the late actress Marisa Paredes. See the poster below. The veteran actress died last year. She is best known internationally for her collaborations with Pedro Almodóvar, whom she worked with on Dark Habits (1983), High Heels (1991), The Flower of My Secret (1995), All About My Mother (1999), Talk to Her (2002), and The Skin I Live In (2011).

Paredes was previously photographed as Rita Hayworth in the Orson Welles classic The Lady from Shanghai for San Sebastian’s 54th edition.

Speaking on García, San Sebastian head José Luis Rebordinos described the vet as a “producer without whom it is impossible to understand the Spanish and Latin American cinema of the last 40 years.”

Earlier this week, the festival added five titles to it’s Official Selection, including Couture from French filmmaker Alice Winocour, starring Angelina Jolie. Also added was Agnieszka Holland’s latest film, Franza co-production of the Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland that narrates the life of the writer Franz Kafka from his birth to his death.