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The 73rd edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival in northern Spain experienced one of its highlights on Friday night with the presentation of the Donostia Award to Jennifer Lawrence.

At the age of 35, the American actress became the youngest performer to receive this recognition for her career, which already includes an Oscar, a Golden Globe and enormous public support for a long series of films that have marked an entire generation.

“Our freedom of speech is under attack in the United States.”

“It’s a huge honour,” the actress told a pre-ceremony press conference, where she also reflected on the state of culture in her country: “Our freedom of speech is under attack in America, including in the world of film, where we realise that we are all connected and need empathy and freedom.”

Lawrence presented her latest film, ‘Kill Me Love’, which represents a turning point in her career and in which she participates as a producer, at the event. The performer encouraged young filmmakers to keep fighting for their dreams: “Learn, go to casting tests, keep trying. But above all, watching films is very important”.

When asked about the role of women in Hollywood, Lawrence noted that creators such as Greta Gerwig, a renowned actress and independent film director, “have shown that when we are given the opportunity, the world benefits, because more stories are told and there are more perspectives.

Oscar winner for ‘The Bright Side of Things’ in 2012, Lawrence has starred in acclaimed titles such as ‘The Great American Swindle’, ‘Don’t Look Up’, ‘Joy’ and ‘The Hunger Games’ trilogy.

In addition, with her production company Excellent Cadaver she has promoted projects such as ‘Causeway’, ‘Sin malos rollos’ and documentaries of social impact such as ‘Zurawski v. Texas’ or ‘Bread & Roses’, which was distinguished with a Peabody Award.

The actress joins a long list of personalities who have received the Donostia Award, such as Penélope Cruz, Julia Roberts and Viggo Mortensen. In San Sebastian, her award crowned a festival marked by political gestures, especially in relation to the war in Gaza.

A festival marked by protests in support of Palestine

The strong political tone that was to mark this year’s San Sebastian Festival was already present at the opening of the event, on 19 September, when some 2,000 people gathered outside the Kursaal to express their support for the Palestinian people.

“Free Palestine” was the slogan chanted as the guests paraded down the red carpet. Inside, presenters Silvia Abril, Toni Acosta and Itziar Ituño condemned “the genocide carried out by Israel in Palestine” and called for a round of applause “to be heard even in Palestine”.

On the same day, Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar wore stickers with the slogan “Genocide Stop” and shouted “Long live free Palestine” during the Donostia award ceremony for producer Esther García. The honoree herself recalled that “films are tools to make the world a more beautiful and fairer place” and urged to “fight to stop the genocide in Gaza now”.

The protests multiplied throughout the week. On 21 September, Juliette Binoche called from the stage for “an end to the massacre in Palestine”, while Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi denounced the insensitivity of international politics.

Last Tuesday, directors such as José María Goenaga and Aitor Arregi, in competition with ‘Maspalomas’, defendedthe embargo on Israel: “It is time to take a clear position”, said Goenaga. The following day, the director of ‘Los Tigres’, Alberto Rodríguez, was categorical: “The continuation of the genocide in Gaza is a disgrace. We are all accomplices if we don’t act”.

Also on Wednesday, in a gesture reminiscent of Javier Bardem‘s keffiyah at the Emmy Awards, Eduard Fernández took to the stage wearing a Palestinian headscarf during the National Film Award ceremony. He read out the names of the children who died in Gaza and warned: “Some will say ‘what a pain in the ass’, but we can’t stop saying it to preserve our dignity”.

San Sebastian, in this edition, has shown that cinema not only celebrates careers such as that of Jennifer Lawrence, but also becomes a loudspeaker for common causes, above all in the world of the seventh art.

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On 15 August 1929, the Spanish doctor Jerónimo Megías fulfilled his dream by embarking on the first trip around the world in the Graf Zeppelin.

It was not the first time that Megías, King Alfonso XIII’s personal physician, had boarded the famous aircraft. In May of that year he obtained a seat on a trip that would take him and 17 other passengers from Friedrichshafen (Germany) to Lakehurst (New Jersey, United States).

On that occasion, the zeppelin had to turn back due to engine failure while flying over the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

This time, however, the challenge was much more ambitious: it would be the first round-the-world flight of a passenger airship.

The trip was a success: the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin departed from Friedrichshafen towards Tokyo, where it made a stopover after flying over the Soviet Union. It crossed the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles for a second stopover and flew over the United States to Lakehurst, on the east coast.

After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the airship returned triumphantly to Germany on 4 September 1929, a journey that lasted 20 days, 4 hours and 14 minutes.

Now, cartographer and science writer Alejandro Polanco has revisited the historic event in an illustrated book: ‘The first flight around the world in the Graf Zeppelin’.

A book to rescue the history of zeppelins

The initiative was paid for by a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The result is a book, in digital and print versions, which tells the story of the Graf Zeppelin through a large collection of restored images of the time, as well as the testimony of Jerónimo Megías, who wrote a book about his experience on the round-the-world voyage.

“The project consisted of scanning the small photographs in high resolution, translating the technical text of the album from German into English and adapting it to create a high quality hardcover book, adding fragments of Megías’ travel diary,” Polanco explained to Euronews Culture.

The restored album includes more than 200 scenes of these airships, from their beginnings in the late 19th century to the 1930s.

“In the 1920s, small photographs of zeppelins were sold in Germany in cigarette packs so that people could complete an album with them,” says Polanco, who acquired the album from a private collector.

It has been a century, but the photographs have been well preserved as they are reproductions on silver bromide paper. The album provided each miniature with a description.

Around the world, told from the inside

The format of the original images is small, but they are highly detailed and show different zeppelins flying, views captured from them and details of their interiors. Audiences of that time could use small devices with lenses to enlarge the scenes, even giving a sense of three-dimensional vision.

It was the easiest way to get close to an experience that was only accessible to a few: Dr Megías had to pay 7,000 dollars to get his ticket around the world.

“I didn’t shy away from flying to London and I didn’t skimp on radiograms to Berlin, Hamburg and Friedrichshafen. The competition was fierce and the battle between the applicants was intense,” Megías said in his memoirs of the trip.

Megías compared the experience on board the Graf Zeppelin to a luxury hotel. The airship had all the necessary amenities: a kitchen with a chef, a communications room that allowed passengers to send and receive telegrams by radio, and a lounge that served as a dining room, living room and office.

The cabins had electric lights and could accommodate two passengers. During the day, the beds could be folded to make a sofa. There were also folding tables by the windows, some folding chairs and compartments with curtains to store belongings.

There was enormous public expectation for the round-the-world flight. American news magnate William Randolph Hearst knew it well and sponsored the trip in return for his media outlets having exclusive rights to chronicle it.

Among the 20 passengers on the aircraft was the British journalist Lady Hay Drummond-Hay, sent by Hearst to the zeppelin, who reported the adventure while becoming the first woman to fly around the world.

The symbol of an era

Polanco’s book not only details the great voyage of the LZ 127, but also the origin of zeppelins, their historical context and the technology they used.

It includes short biographies of key people, such as the founder of the company, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, and the engineer Hugo Eckener, who commanded the airship on its most emblematic flights.

“The LZ 127 was a symbol of the Weimar Republic, before Germany fell under the absolute power of the Nazis in 1933,” Polanco writes.

In addition to the famous round-the-world journey, the Graf Zeppelin made hundreds of trips, including a regular route across the Atlantic to South America, carrying passengers, cargo and mail without any significant mishaps until it was retired in 1937.

It even made a ‘triangular’ trip between Europe, South America and the US, in 1930.

The tragic accident of the LZ 129 Hindenburg, the zeppelin that exploded in New Jersey on 6 May 1937, marked the end of these aircraft’s golden age. Besides, the rapid development of aeroplanes accelerated their decline.

“Nowadays the new airships fly thanks to non-flammable helium. But I don’t think helium would have saved the old zeppelins either, it was just that the Hindenburg disaster hastened an end that the arrival of improved aircraft had already heralded,” says Polanco in the book that pays tribute to these giants of the sky.

It’s April, and the cherry blossoms around the suburban homes of Terenure, in Dublin, are in full bloom. Marian Keyes is sitting in a cosy chair, with her feet up on a stool, in a garden shed. This is not just any garden shed. The sign on the door reads The Department of Calm and Efficiency. Inside it are a TV and shelves heaving with golf trophies. A framed T-shirt on a wall reads Minister of Cop On.

This shed belongs to Daddy Walsh, husband of Mammy Walsh, father of the five Walsh sisters, all characters loved by millions of readers of Keyes’ bestselling novels. The cast and crew are coming to the end of an 11-week shoot for The Walsh Sisters, RTÉ’s highly anticipated TV adaptation of two of her novels about the family.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Keyes says as she looks around the cluttered space, thinking of her late father. “My dad would have loved a man shed. Somewhere to watch the golf in peace, that’s all he asked for. He would have locked the door and eaten crisps and chocolate and been in here for hours.”

Visiting the set has been a surreal and satisfying experience for Keyes. This adaptation has been a long time coming. She has sold more than 35 million copies of her more than 20 books, in 33 languages, yet Watermelon, her first novel and the first of several to feature the Walsh family, is the only one to have made it to television screens, back in 2003.

Keyes’ second novel, Rachel’s Holiday, a darkly subversive romantic comedy about Rachel Walsh and her descent into, and recovery from, drug and alcohol addiction, was first optioned in 1998. Keyes and her husband, Tony Baines, were flown first class to Los Angeles “and put up in a swanky hotel”. Nothing came of that trip, but lately there has been a clamour to present her work to existing fans and, it’s safe to imagine, a new generation of readers.

“You wait years for an adaptation and then two come along at once,” Keyes says about the fact that a Netflix version of her novel Grown Ups is also in the works. That one is being filmed around Dublin as well, helmed by Samantha Strauss, the woman behind the streamer’s hit show Apple Cider Vinegar. Its impressively starry cast includes Aisling Bea, Robert Sheehan, Sinéad Cusack and Adrian Dunbar.

“It’s great that it’s happening now, but I never minded,” Keyes says. “I always said the books were enough by themselves – they don’t need to be legitimised by another medium. But I do have to say this: The Walsh Sisters has been worth waiting for … The writing is brilliant, the women playing the sisters are all fabulous. I couldn’t be happier.”

Keyes had no interest in writing the series herself. In fact, she was the one who recommended that producers consider Stefanie Preissner, the writer behind RTÉ’s hit show Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope and the play Solpadeine Is My Boyfriend.

Keyes speaks admiringly of Preissner, who has taken her novels Rachel’s Holiday and Anybody Out There, written in the 1990s and partly set in New York, and transplanted them firmly to contemporary Dublin to create The Walsh Sisters.

The RTÉ series, made in association with the BBC, follows the messy lives of the five Walsh sisters as they navigate the chaos, self-destruction and sisterly dynamics of their late 20s and early 30s.

The sisters have a lot going on: there’s Claire, the overwhelmed single mother (who’s played by Danielle Galligan); the dependable Maggie (Preissner herself), who is desperate for a baby of her own; Rachel (Caroline Menton), who’s in denial about her addiction issues; the loved-up Anna (Louisa Harland), who’s facing a profound personal crisis; and Helen (Máiréad Tyers), the youngest, who is stuck living at home and dealing with her own secret struggles.

[ Marian Keyes on casting The Walsh Sisters: ‘The big worry was who is playing Luke Costello?’Opens in new window ]

Rachel’s Holiday was heavily inspired by Keyes’ own experience of alcoholism. Before she became a writer she attended the Rutland Centre in Dublin to be treated for her condition. As loyal readers will know, Rachel’s “holiday” turns out to be a spell in a treatment centre called the Cloisters, where various members of the Walsh family attend sessions to tell Rachel exactly how her addiction has affected them.

In the shed, Keyes, who has been sober for more than 30 years, is thinking about her first visit to the set with Baines, watching on a screen as Mammy, who is played by Carrie Crowley, and Daddy Walsh – “lovely Aidan Quinn, in his slip-on shoes and anorak” – walked up the path to the Cloisters.

“It was emotional for both of us,” Keyes says. “It’s hard to describe. It’s not like the characters are our children or anything, but they came from my head with Tony’s help, and we’ve both felt a lot of ownership of them.”

The author remembers, early in the process, being on a video call with the producer Dixie Linder, the director Ian Fitzgibbon and the five actors cast as the sisters.

“The five of them were all talking over each other, exactly the way I am in my family,” says Keyes, who also grew up with four siblings. “The chemistry between them was real. I believed they were a family. Then seeing them on set for the first time was just a thrill.

“It’s an incredible thing, watching these characters you made up in your head talking and walking around on a television set wearing sunglasses and bomber jackets. And the wonderful thing is they are each different, each exactly as I imagined them.”

It’s seven years since Preissner flew to London to pitch her vision of The Walsh Sisters to producers. A lot has happened in her life since then, including a new relationship, a wedding, the birth of her two children and the death of her grandmother, “a massive Marian Keyes fan”.

Talking during a brief break in filming, Preissner is recalling that meeting in London where, having done a deep dive into the Keyes books she’d been reading for years, she laid out her vision for how she’d go about adapting Walshworld for television if she were given the chance. Other writers were being considered, but Preissner got the job.

Although each of the Walsh family novels, from Watermelon to Again, Rachel, focuses on a different sister, Preissner wanted to create a world where all the sisters and their storylines could exist together. It was a tricky puzzle, because they were all at different ages and stages in each of the novels. Keyes says Preissner has a brain “like a Rubik’s cube”, which came in handy when she was writing the show.

“I needed to pick storylines that would bring them all together,” Preissner says. “Ian [Fitzgibbon] and I have a saying: ‘Where two or more of the Walsh sisters are gathered, Jesus is present.’ It’s just so good when the sisters are together, so I wanted them to all be in the same world.”

Transposing the action from the 1990s setting of the novels was an interesting challenge, Preissner says. The Mammy Walsh we see in the TV version, for example, is different in some ways from the Mammy in the books – “she has an iPad and probably doesn’t go to Mass” – although her frustration and disappointment with some of the life choices of her more dysfunctional daughters remain unchanged.

There were other challenges in adapting the novels for a contemporary audience. Preissner says she talked a lot to Keyes about the novels, which she says in parts were “fatphobic, white and heteronormative”, a product of the times in which they were written. (“My thinking has changed profoundly since then,” Keyes says, “and it’s a special kind of shame to have opinions that hurt people enshrined in books that were written 20 or 30 years ago. All I can do is do better now that I know better.”)

“I asked Marian if we could change that up, and she was totally open to it,” Preissner says. This is reminiscent of Element Pictures’ TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which contained more diversity than the novel.

For the Dubliner Caroline Menton, a relative newcomer seen most recently in the Irish horror movie Oddity, playing the part of Rachel was a huge opportunity. “It’s a dream role,” she says. Did she feel the pressure and expectations of readers on her shoulders in portraying a legend of popular Irish fiction?

“Well, yeah, it was a big responsibility,” she says. Menton hopes that she has done the character justice and that fans of the novels will approve. It was important, she says, given Rachel’s backstory, to delve into her issues. Keyes says that Menton “did her research, she knows her Gabor Maté, she knows that the question is not why the addiction but why the pain?”

[ Gabor Maté: I began to notice that the people who got chronically ill had trouble saying ‘no’Opens in new window ]

Before filming began, Menton visited a drug-rehabilitation centre. “I went there and got to speak to someone who was really vulnerable and open and kind enough to share their story with me. It was an eye-opener.”

It’s a nuanced story. Rachel, with her stable family background and no obvious trauma, shows that addiction does not discriminate. “And this is the power of Marian Keyes,” Preissner says. “If that novel had been called Girl With a Needle in Her Arm, nobody would have brought it to read on the beach. Marian hides the vegetables in the chocolate.”

With the global success of Sharon Horgan’s award-winning Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters, there’s no denying that Irish sisters have been enjoying a moment. Does Preissner have any thoughts on the inevitable comparisons between the two shows, which are both set in Dublin and feature gobby, funny, middle-class Irish sisters?

She says it did lead to some discussion about whether to keep “sisters” in the title of the show, which was in development well before Bad Sisters came along. “It definitely helps that our show is based on Marian’s books – like, I haven’t just created a show based on five sisters,” she says. “I also think Bad Sisters is very plot driven, where ours is more character driven.”

As with Horgan, who played a sister in her show, Preissner has taken a lot on, starring in the show as Maggie Walsh while also writing most of the episodes.

When it comes to the other sisters, it seems reasonable to assume that the show will make stars out of the young ensemble cast. Apart from Louisa Harland, who played Orla in Derry Girls and does a stunning turn as Anna Walsh, most of them are relatively unknown.

[ Derry Girls’ Saoirse-Monica Jackson: ‘Dyslexia shaped me. I’m always thinking two steps ahead’Opens in new window ]

Máiréad Tyers is outstanding as the youngest Walsh. Menton is being spoken of as a potential breakout star. “Whatever happens beyond this point, I did my dream job, and I got to work with these amazing people,” the young actor says.

Preissner has other concerns. “Our big fear is that we’re going to get commissioned for The Walsh Sisters season two and she’s going to be booked on something else,” she says in mock indignation. “I will be here for it, I will,” Menton promises. “You’d f**king better,” Preissner says, laughing.

The cameras are rolling, and I’m standing in the front garden of the Walsh family home, having a whispered conversation with Aidan Quinn. Metres from us, Luke Costello, played by Jay Duffy, is knocking at the Walshes’ door after a harrowing visit to Rachel, his girlfriend, in rehab.

Quinn is carrying a prop, a copy of Ticket, The Irish Times’ culture supplement. “It’s a great newspaper,” he whispers. That’s not the only reason we’re blushing. For some of us of a certain age Quinn will always be the handsome star of the Madonna film Desperately Seeking Susan, from 1985.

The actor, who lives with his family in New York, also whispers that there was a 10-year period when he couldn’t get to work in Ireland because of commitments in the United States. “So it’s really very nice to come back here,” he says.

He is full of praise for Crowley, who plays the overbearing, perennially put-upon Mammy Walsh. “She has all the best lines,” he says. I mention a scene in a hotel where he is trying to get romantic with her. “I don’t get very far on that occasion.”

Quinn is called inside by the director, but later I get a quick moment upstairs in the house with Crowley, who mentions the same hotel scene and adopts her Mammy Walsh persona: “I mean, where in my head do you think I have room to think about sex today with all that is going on?”

The star of An Cailín Ciúin has a good feeling about the show. “You never know until you see the finished product, but sometimes you have a positive feeling. I’ve got that feeling about this.”

She asks what scenes I’ve watched so far. I tell her about the one with Luke. “Ridey Luke!” she exclaims, using a word that is an essential part of the Keyes canon. We agree that Duffy does indeed tick all the boxes required of the romantic hero of Rachel’s Holiday.

“And do you know who his father is?” Crowley asks, beaming. Duffy’s father is the Coronation Street actor and former Boyzone star Keith Duffy. “Also ridey,” Crowley declares before heading off for her next scene.

Every so often on the set of The Walsh Sisters someone will say, “Let’s consult the source of the Nile.” That’s how Fitzgibbon and Preissner refer to Keyes. Back in the shed, the writer told me that she was flattered by the fact that the cast and crew – she had many of them over to her home for a party before shooting began – would text her about everything from costume choices to character motivation.

Duffy, whose casting is arguably the most intensely scrutinised of the show, took full advantage of “the source”. Keyes has been extremely vocal about “the thing with Luke. There was a lot of pressure coming over the wires from the fans, saying, ‘Just don’t f**k this up.’ Everyone has their own idea of what Luke looks like. For me he’s like a young Keanu Reeves, but other people have completely different pictures. It needed to be right.”

Taking a break from the set with Galligan, Duffy reflects on the expectations of fans. “When you step into something which is loved that much you’re kind of, like, ‘Oh my God’. There’s a lot of pressure, but it’s the same as with any role: whether it’s loved by fans of a book series or not, you have a responsibility to do your best and trust that you are enough … But then to have Marian a phone call away was brilliant.”

What did he ask her? “I wanted to know who Luke was outside of his relationship with Rachel. What makes him tick? What’s his flaw? Because a lot of the book is about how amazing he is and how much charisma he has. But nobody is perfect. And she told me that he sees the world in black and white. He’s very set in his beliefs. That was helpful.”

Galligan, who also has a role in House of Guinness, the new Netflix drama, was one of the final sisters to be cast. She says she auditioned for two other sisters “but I fluffed it”. It was both a relief and a thrill when, after a long Christmas on tenterhooks, she was told she had landed the part of Claire, the glam single mother.

Filming is nearly over when we meet. She says the cast have become like a real family. “We’ll miss each other when it’s all over.” As with everyone else involved in The Walsh Sisters, Galligan can’t wait to see how audiences react.

“Stefanie has written a really compelling, grounded drama about a family with everyday, real life issues, about addiction, about grief, about sisterhood. But she’s done it in such a way that’s so Irish in the sense that it’s light and funny at times, but also really heavy and emotional.

“And that’s why I was so excited to be a part of it. I think she’s done an amazing job capturing Marian’s beloved characters and adapting them brilliantly to the world we’re in now.”

The Walsh Sisters begins on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player at 9.30pm on Sunday, September 28th; The Walsh Sisters: The Official Podcast, presented by Marian Keyes and Stefanie Preissner, will be available straight after each episode

The Book Club Live: Summer Reads with Marian Keyes

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