The United States, Korea, the United Kingdom and, in recent times, also Spain, are some of the filmographies that have brought horror and fantasy to screens around the world. But the genre has been growing and gaining followers in other countries whose film industries are more modest, but where there is no shortage of talent.
The Sitges Festival has been programming films from exotic cultures for several editions, but this year it has opted for new emerging filmographies that, almost reaching the halfway point of the contest, have left titles highly applauded by a dedicated audience and that, furthermore, coincide when addressing terror from the vindication of the feminine.
Zarrar Kahn was born in Karachi (Pakistan) and spent his childhood there. Later his family moved to Canada where the young man began to be interested in cinema. Kahn has made several short films and has managed to make a name for himself on the world cinema scene thanks to his first feature film, In Flames, which participated in the last Cannes festival and which was screened yesterday in Sitges where it was very well received.
For his feature debut, Kahn has returned to Karachi where young Mariam, who lives with her mother and brother after the death of her grandfather, studies medicine. The girl's life is disturbed by the death of a boy she was starting to date, by the harassment of some men and by a profiteering relative who wants to keep her inheritance. As if that were not enough, ghosts haunt the protagonist of In Flames, which is still a film that vindicates the rights of women in a country where equality is conspicuous by its absence.
Despite his youth, 38 years old, Chilean director Christopher Murray has already made a name for himself in international cinema thanks to his documentaries and The Blind Christ, which competed at the 2016 Venice Film Festival. Murray is now moving away from civilization to set his new film, Brujería, on a remote Chilean island in the 19th century. A German settler cruelly kills the father of Rosa, an indigenous girl, who will become empowered and seek revenge through the most ancient magic.
Malaysian filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu now disembarks at the competition to which she came for the first time in 2019 to develop the project of this film that she considers so personal and that, after winning the Grand Prix of Critics' Week in Cannes, will compete for the Oscar for Malaysia. The story of Tiger Stripes talks about feeling different from others through the figure of an extroverted teenager, Zaffan, who is separated from her by school and her friends when she has her period. The director creates a disturbing atmosphere that alludes to female liberation, while she combines the popular culture of her country with folk horror, the Z series and Tik Tok dances.
