Tom Blyth, Mia McKenna-Bruce Join Claire Denis in San Sebastian for European Premiere of ‘The Fence’

British stars Tom Blyth and Mia McKenna-Bruce were beaming alongside French filmmaker Claire Denis on Sunday ahead of the European premiere of The Fence, competing in San Sebastian Film Festival‘s main selection.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes actor Blyth and How to Have Sex breakout McKenna-Bruce took to the red carpet at San Sebastian’s Kursaal Theater with cast members Isaach de Bankoléand writer Suzanne Lindon. Lead actor Matt Dillon had to pull out of his scheduled San Sebastian appearances at the last minute.

The movie, based on the 1979 play by Bernard-Marie Koltès Black Battles with Dogs, is set on a construction site in West Africa. Horn (Dillon), the manager, and Cal (Blyth), a young engineer, share lodging behind the double gates of their compound. Leonie (McKenna-Bruce), Horn’s recent bride, comes to join them the same night that a man, Alboury (de Bankolé), appears at the fence demanding the body of his brother who died earlier that day on the site.

Denis is best known for 1999’s Beau Travail, regarded as one of the greatest films of the 20th century. She was raised in colonial French Africa, where her father was a civil servant, and often uses it as a setting for her films.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s review of The Fence, which first premiered at TIFF earlier this month, said Denis “is no stranger to the social and racial tensions colonialism left behind on the continent,” but her newest feature “ultimately plays like the minor work of a still major filmmaker.”

The 79-year-old director said about The Fence at a press conference earlier in the day: “It’s a metaphor for the colonial violence. It’s a complicated expression because it means it’s in the past [and] nothing like that will happen today, but today, a construction site like that still exists… I was never thinking of Alboury as a metaphor, but as a brother.”

Blyth added about building chemistry with McKenna-Bruce: “We’re lucky. We got along, naturally and very well from the beginning, and Claire isn’t a huge fan of rehearsing, which I think was a real benefit to us because we got to discover the relationship as we went, and we mostly shot in order.”

The pair is not the only young stars drawing crowds at the Spanish film festival. Louis Garrel was in attendance earlier in the evening for the European premiere of Couture with Angelina Jolie and director Alice Winocour. Later in the week, Jennifer Lawrence will be picking up her Donostia Award. Longtime San Sebastian Film Festival chiefJosé Luis Rebordinos told THR on Thursday that the likes of Blyth, Lawrence and McKenna-Bruce are vital in attracting young people to the event. “The most important problem in this moment for cinema is to have people in the cinema,” he said. “And [therefore we need] young people in this festival. In 20 years, the only possibility for us, the people that love cinema, is the young people that love cinema.”

The 73rd San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.