The festival will offer a retrospective to Jose Giovanni

José Giovanni, director, screenwriter and French novelist will star in the retrospective cycle of the 74 edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival.

José Giovanni (1923-2004), born in Paris under the name of Joseph Antoine Roger Damiani, was first a novelist, fixer and screenwriter; when he took full responsibility for his projects as director, he gave the French police genre "special looks and aesthetics," as explained from the Festival.

Giovanni's novel 'Le Trou', which tells of his time in prison - he was charged with murder and sentenced to death, but was later commuted to death with forced labour - aroused interest in Jacques Becker, who decided to take it to the big screen.

"Classe tous risques" (1958) was born from his third novel, "Classe tous risques/The Big Risk" (1960), a film by Claude Sautet, and served as screenwriter for Giovanni. Years later, Jean-Pierre Melville adapted his second novel, "Le Deuxième souffle" (1958), to create one of the key titles of the "polar" genre: "Le Deuxième souffle/Second Wind" (1966).

In 1963, he began his fruitful relationship as a screenwriter with Jacques Deray - 'Symphonie pour un massacre/Symphony for a massacre' (1963), 'Rififi à Tokyo/Rififi in Tokyo' (1963), 'L'homme de Marrakech/The Man from Marrakech' (1966) and 'Avec la peau des autres/To Skin a Spy' (1966) - and three years later he did the same thing with Robert Rich - 's' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' s' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' -' ---' '' '' '-' -' -' -' -' ---' ------' ------' -----' -' -' -------------------------------------------------------------- Criminal Face '(1968) -.

Giovanni debuted behind the camera with 'La Loi du survivant/Law of Survival' (1967), and from then on, with the sole exception of 'Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan' (1969) by Henri Verneuil, Giovanni worked mainly on directing; he soon established "a style of his own, raw and correct, adapted to himself or to other writers, in stories full of diverse characters," as explained by the Festival.

Of the 15 feature films he directed (along with two TV films and three television series), special mention was made of "Le Rapace/Birds of Prey" (1968), "Dernier domicile connu/Last Known Address" (1970), "Un aller simple/One Way Ticket" (1971), "La Scoumoune/Hit Man" (1972), "Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in Town" (1973), "Le Gitan/the Gypsy" (1975) and "Une Tuire" (1971).