Sisu, the new work by Finn Jelmari Halander, has risen against all odds with the award for best film at the Sitges Film Festival. The film, set in World War II and which went largely unnoticed by critics, follows a kind of lone ranger who finds a generous booty of gold and must face the Nazis on a journey through the desert.
Halander, a director who has recently worked on television series such as Fast or Perfect Commando, already triumphed in these parts in 2010 with the black comedy Rare Exports: A Hooligan Christmas Carol. Sisu has also won three other outstanding awards in the list of winners: the best male performance for Jorma Tommila, music and photography.
Project Wolf Hunting, by South Korea's Kim Hong-sun, has won the Special Jury Prize and a Special Mention for the best sound editing, editing and choreography by stuntmen for dangerous scenes thanks to a story that spills tons of blood on the screen. that the director locks up very dangerous prisoners on a ship where a story of maximum violence unfolds.
Pearl, by Ti West, was one of the favorites and has finally won the award for best direction for the American, who in this edition has been honored with a Time Machine and the leading actress, Mia Goth, in a role that dives in the origins of the villain old woman from the prequel X, released just a few months ago.
With echoes of the golden age of Hollywood, West places the story set in 1918, narrates how the protagonist must take care of her father in an isolated farm under the watchful eye of her mother and yearning for a life like the ones she sees in the movies of the golden age of Hollywood, finding that his ambitions collide with his repressive environment.
Another much-loved Time Machine in Sitges, like the Frenchman Quentin Dupieux, the king of absurd humor who presented two films in competition, could not leave empty-handed. Both the surreal script of Smoking causes coughing and that of Incredible but true have been recognized ex-aequo by the jury.
There hasn't been much luck with Spanish productions. Irati, by Paul Urkijo, who was one of the favorites with his epic tale of the Middle Ages, has won the Audience Award, however, and has had to settle for the award for best special effects shared with the Finnish Ego, about a girl who finds a strange giant egg.
In the Noves Visions section, the one chosen as the best film was the French Jerk, by Gisèle Vienne, which follows a serial killer in Texas in the 1970s. Filipina Martika Ramirez Escobar has been crowned the director for Leonor will never die, about a retired film director who falls into a coma after a television falls on her head.
The surprising Huesera, by the Mexican Michelle Garza, has won the Blood Window award for best film and Diego Guzmán's The Other Way, the best feature film award in the Anima't section. Órbita's best film went to H4Z4RD, directed by Jonas Govaerts. And, as was announced a few days ago, Little Pig, Carlota Méliès de Oro for Best Film.
