Antonio Banderas Takes San Sebastian Film Festival by Storm

Banderas attended the festival to promote “Automata,” in which he plays the shaven-headed and sad Jacq Vaucan.

“I feel like working more in Spain,” the actor told Efe. “And I feel like it more as far as producing and directing are concerned, rather than acting, but I’m not going to close any doors. In any case, I’ll probably live in the U.S. and have my hub here, but I’m going to maintain a more continuous line of work with my country.”

The actor and producer of the film directed by Gabe Ibañez – a science fiction story that deals with the concept of technological singularity, the point when machines have become more intelligent than humans – entered it on Sunday in the competition for the festival’s Concha de Oro award.

The film – set in a near-future in which what remains of humanity is in decline, the world is becoming a desert and domestic robots are required to survive – “visits the loss of values (and shows) how one man kills another as if he were a dog. Robots are the good guys in the story,” Banderas said.

The film cost just $6.5 million to shoot thanks to Banderas’ personal contacts and favors granted by his friends ranging from production cooperation from Millennium Films to the voice of Javier Bardem as one of the key robots, and including that of his ex-wife Melanie Griffith.