Postcard from San Sebastian

On the beach: Dennis Hopper is in town

By Rafael Estefania BBC World Service in San Sebastian, Spain

The San Sebastian Film Festival's 50th anniversary could have been used as a good excuse for a champagne-fuelled party.

Instead, the organisers have opted for a solid film programme in the official competition, as well as a couple of fascinating and overdue retrospectives.

One is dedicated to the British director Michael Powell (Black Narcissus, Peeping Tom), and the other to the German film-maker Volker Scholondorff (The Tin Drum, Der Junge Torles).

There was also a selection of the best 50 films from the 1950s.

Irish director Neil Jordan is at the festival

The Zabaltegui section - which screens the jewels of other festivals - returned, as did the Made In Spanish competition.

The festival opened with Neil Jordan's The Good Thief, in which Nick Nolte plays a desperate man who plans to rob a casino in the South of France to better his luck.

The director attended but Nick Nolte had to stay away following his drink-driving charge in the US.

Francis Ford Coppola stops off in Bilbao

But John Malkovich did make it, together with Javier Bardem, to promote his out-of-competition directorial debut The Dancer Upstairs.

Javier Bardem can still win the best actor award for his role in Los Lunes Al Sol, which sees him with a bit of extra weight, a caveman-like beard, and a receding hair line.

The festival is paying tribute to Francis Ford Coppola, who showed why he is one of the greatest film directors of all time at a two-hour long press conference.

He talked about terrorism, digital editing, The Godfather films - and the process of wine-making, his other business when not directing movies.

Dennis Hopper looks less menacing by the sea, and he is receiving the Donostia prize for his contribution to cinema, along with Bob Hoskins and Jessica Lange.

Lugares Comunes actor Federico Luppi and co-star Mercedes Sampietro

Still to come are some of the favourites competing for the Concha de Oro, such as Autofocus by US director Paul Schrader, and the Mexican movie El crimen del padre Amaro by Carlos Carrera, starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

Argentine film-maker Aristarain's Lugares Comunes is also in competition, and is hotly tipped by many.

Some of the 20 contenders already shown are the Japanese Uwi wa miteita directed by Ken Kumai - a film on which Akira Kurosawa worked before he died - and Whale Rider from New Zealand.