‘The People Upstairs,’ ‘My Heart Goes Boom!’ Set for San Sebastian World Premieres

Cesc Gay’s “The People Upstairs” (a.k.a. “Sentimental”), Nacho Álvarez’s feature debut “My Heart Goes Boom! (“Explota Explota”) and the series “Ines of My Soul” (“Inés del alma mía”), based on the book of the same name by Isabel Allende, will have their world premieres at the San Sebastian film festival in September.

All three are galas from Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), official sponsor of the festival.

Spain’s Gay had a hit with “Truman,” starring Ricardo Darin (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) and Javier Cámara (“Talk to Her”). The film world premiered at San Sebastian in 2015, won best actor for Darin and Camara, and went on to carve out sizeable box office in and outside Spain.

“The People Upstairs,” starring Camara, Belen Cuesta, Griselda Siciliani and Alberto San Juan, is the adaptation of a play by Gay himself, where a meeting between two neighboring couples ends in an emotional tsunami.

Uruguayan Álvarez’s “My Heart Goes Boom!” is set in Spain in the early 1970s. Ingrid García-Jonsson plays a young singer and dancer as she tries to make her dreams come true. The soundtrack features the greatest hits of the Italian Raffaella Carrà. The cast also includes Verónica Echegui, Fernando Guallar, Fernando Tejero, Pedro Casablanc, Carlos Hipólito and Natalia Millán.

Directed by Cuban Alejandro Bazzano and Chilean Nicolás Acuña, “Inez of My Soul” is a period drama set in the 16th century. Elena Rivera plays the titular Inés Suárez, a young girl from Extremadura who crosses the Atlantic in colonial times in search of her husband (Benjamín Vicuña), and going on to have a passionate romance with the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia (Eduardo Noriega). The festival will showcase the first episodes of the series.

The festival has several other features with the participation of RTVE, including Pablo Aguerro’s “Akellare,” Woody Allen’s “Rifkin’s Festival,” and David Perez Sanudo’s “Ane.”