San Sebastian 2011 preview: Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen to present 'Shame'

Yesterday two fellow bloggers and yours truly agreed to jointly take on questions and suggestions in our twitter accounts from colleagues and readers to pass on guests and attendees to the 59th San Sebastian Film Festival. We forgot, however, to explicitly warn against asking for current-man-of-the-hour Michael Fassbender's telephone number.

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Aleksander Sokurov's 'Faust' wins Golden Lion in Venice

Many critics and pundits had feared rather than predicted that Aleksander Sokurov's take on Goethe's Faust could walk home with this year's top trophy at the Venice Film Festival and, to the dismay of many, it did. The jury, chaired by Darren Aronofsky, chose Faust over much better received films like Steve McQueen's Shame, Yorgos Lanthimos's Alps, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights or Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, all part of a competition strand that Aranofsky himself called "exhilarating and maddening".

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