Festival de Cine de San Sebastián merch for Mexican producers and delegations

Merch programme for Mexican teams attending the Festival de Cine de San Sebastián

Venue

Centro Kursaal Elkargunea and Teatro Victoria Eugenia, Donostia / San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain

Reference calendar

September each year, opening the European film awards calendar

Target audience

International audiovisual industry, European sales agents, platform buyers, global press and producers with Ibero-American competition catalogue

The Festival de Cine de San Sebastián — Zinemaldia — runs each September in Donostia and is one of the three A-list windows of the European awards calendar, alongside Cannes and Venice. For Mexican independent producers, platforms, talent agencies and festival desks, Zinemaldia is the date that opens the European awards season and the stage where an Ibero-American film can lock European distribution, Goya nominations and a slot in the Berlin, Rotterdam and Spirit Awards line-ups.

For most Mexican delegations that go to Donostia, merch works as a programme of its own that does not mix with the rest of the Spanish autumn, because San Sebastián has its own visual language, its own hospitality tier and its own press piece. One MXN purchase order, one CFDI 4.0 with complemento de pagos for the partial payments between the premiere, the market screening and the closing dinner, and a set of premium tees, press kits and VIP boxes that flies from Mexico City to Madrid or Bilbao and then travels by road to Donostia. Treating San Sebastián as one programme makes sure the piece matches the language of the official poster and the delegation arrives with a unified look.

The Mexican delegation that attends Zinemaldia usually takes three types of relationships out of the week in Donostia: distribution conversations with European sales agents who work international catalogue and can take the film into their AFM, Berlin and Rotterdam line-ups; the conversations at the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, where European producers look for Mexican partners for their ICA, Eurimages, Media and Ibero-American fund calls; and the global-press contacts who cover the festival for Variety, Screen International, Cineuropa and Cahiers du Cinéma Español and are worth their weight in gold for the international run of the film in the following eighteen months.

The most prized item in the San Sebastián programme is the film's, festival desk's or platform's premium tee, carried by the director, the producers, the cast and the distribution crew at every premiere and photo call. Producing the apparel in Mexico under an IMMEX programme and shipping it by air from Mexico City to Madrid or Bilbao is usually the cleanest route for Zinemaldia runs — between 150 and 400 units for a large delegation — because carta porte 3.0 covers the transatlantic leg with one document and USMCA provisions apply to the return of un-delivered pieces.

The post-San Sebastián retention lot ships separately from the festival-week lot, with its own purchase order and its own delivery schedule. A curated box for the European sales agent who opened the distribution conversation, a box for the European producer with whom co-production was discussed, and a formal set for the global journalist who covered the premiere. We treat the post-Zinemaldia window as a mini-programme — names, addresses, delivery windows — because office addresses rarely match festival addresses, and the mistake of sending the VIP box to the wrong hotel in the old part is exactly the mistake that costs a deal with a Berlin sales agent.

If you are planning Zinemaldia as the opening of a wider circuit — San Sebastián, Seminci, Valladolid, Cuenca, Girona, Extremadura, a mission to AFM, Berlin or Rotterdam — the best move is to discuss the full programme before sending the first lot to production. One design line aligned with the language of the official poster, one colour palette, one premium tee weight and one set of packaging for the whole autumn gives you real economies of scale and saves you from ending up in December with silver Zinemaldia tees and blue Valladolid tees when the delegation needed a single autumn programme that opens strong in Donostia.

The final shipment for the post-Zinemaldia retention leg usually leaves Madrid or Bilbao for CDMX in one consignment, with one CFDI 4.0, one carta porte 3.0 for the transatlantic leg and named delivery per recipient at each delegation office. When the apparel was produced in Mexico under an IMMEX programme and returns the same way, USMCA provisions apply in full and the close of the autumn fiscal cycle sits in one MXN accounting line.

Production and transatlantic logistics

The Zinemaldia programme runs as one lot with its own visual language and its own production cadence, with its own MXN purchase order, its own CFDI 4.0 and its own carta porte 3.0 for the transatlantic leg. Producing in Mexico under an IMMEX programme and shipping by air from Mexico City to Madrid or Bilbao covers the delegation's large runs with one fiscal document, while press and programmer kits usually pay better when produced locally in Madrid or San Sebastián to react to the final accreditation list. The post-Zinemaldia retention leg is routed in one consignment from Madrid or Bilbao to CDMX, with named delivery per recipient and reconciled against the close of the autumn fiscal cycle.

Frequently asked questions