Brad Pitt landed in San Sebastian on the morning of 20 September with Ines de Ramon. Hundreds of people were waiting at the doors of the Hotel Maria Cristina, where festival guests traditionally stay, and he went out to them: signing autographs, taking photographs and talking to those who had been standing there for hours. The Spanish press called it a bath in the crowd — by their accounts his security moved him through it a metre at a time.

De Ramon stayed as inconspicuous as she could: sunglasses, a cap, no posing for the cameras. The couple first walked a festival carpet together in Venice in 2024, but in San Sebastian the public half of the trip is so far entirely his.

Pitt is here with Heart of the Beast, directed by David Ayer. It screens out of competition on Wednesday 23 September; the festival itself runs from 18 to 26 September. Pitt plays a former special forces officer who survives a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness with only a retired military dog, Odin, for company. He also produced the film, and attends the screening alongside the director.

For San Sebastian this is an event of its own order: Pitt was last at the festival in 2009, presenting Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Seventeen years separate the two visits.

This is the festival's 74th edition, and Pitt is not the only name on the bill: Penelope Cruz is on the programme too. Heart of the Beast screens out of competition, so it is not in the running for the Golden Shell, and the visit is an event exactly to the degree the crowd outside the hotel makes it one.

22 September falls the day before the screening. Festival days like that are usually made of photocalls, interviews and short appearances outside the hotel, so the pictures of Pitt and de Ramon worth waiting for are the ones from the premiere itself.