Jaume Balagueró's latest and long-awaited film, Venus, will open the curtain on the 55th edition of the Sitges Festival on October 6. The Catalan director directs a terrifying story written together with Fernando Navarro, inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and starring Ester Expósito, protagonist of Élite.
The film will have its world premiere at the Toronto festival, which has selected it for its Midnight Madness section, and Sitges will host its European premiere. It will be seen in commercial cinemas from December 2.
Venus is the second project of The Fear Collection, the Spanish film label specializing in the horror and suspense film genre, created by Sony Pictures International Productions and Pokeepsie Films (Banijay Iberia), the production company of Álex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang, in association with Prime Video, whose official presentation took place in the last edition of the festival dedicated to fantastic cinema.
Little is known about what Balagueró's new job is about after premiering the action film Way Down last year with box office success. The synopsis only reveals that the director conjures cosmic terror inside a building on the outskirts of Madrid.
During the announcement of the film last year, Balagueró stated that “When Álex called me to direct 'Venus' I immediately said yes, and I thought about what would happen if we took that universe of cosmic terror, from Lovecraft, and moved it to today, also in a dirty environment, on the outskirts, in a very modern city where there is misery, a world close to sordid… and that is what we have done with 'Venus'”.
The director has already inaugurated the contest directed by Ángel Sala in other editions with Darkness, [REC 2] -together with Paco Plaza- and [REC 4]. And he has been present in the Official Section with titles such as Los sin nombre (winner of three awards), [REC] (with Paco Plaza, which also won three awards), Frágiles, While you sleep and Musa.
In addition to Expósito, the cast includes Ángela Cremonte ('Cable Girls', 'Paco's Men'), Magüi Mira ('A Normal World'), the Goya-nominated actor Fernando Valdivieso ('You Will Not Kill', ' Up to heaven') and Federico Aguado ('Plastic Sea', 'Love in troubled times') among others.
