The Sitges Festival already has everything ready to offer a good dose of cinema and a few scares to the spectators. The contest, which will be held between October 6 and 16, redoubles its commitment to the national and international fantastic genre with titles such as As bestas, Cerdita, After Yang or Resurrection, as explained this morning by its director, Ángel Sala. In addition, in this 55th edition, the contest will reward Edgar Wright and Nel Marshall.
Rodrigo Sorogoyen passed through Sitges last year to present his chapter of Stories to keep you awake. In this edition, he will return with As bestas, a film that has received critical acclaim after its stay at the Cannes Festival, which narrates the tensions of coexistence in a remote Galician village. Cerdita, by Carlota Martínez Pereda, is a drama about child bullying, which was in Sudance where nothing went unnoticed.
Irati, by Paul Urkijo Alijo, is another of the national cinema bets for this new edition of Sitges. The film moves to medieval Euskadi to enter a forest full of dangers and mysteries. Raúl Cerezo and Fernando González Gómez were also at the Melià de Sitges last year to present their debut film, La Pasadena. Now they return to the contest with Viejos, a disturbing story that takes place during a heat wave.
Sandra González-Perellón will bring to the contest the story of an orphan convinced that she has superpowers and can avenge her mother's death in Amazing Elisa. And Luis Tinoco will present a woman whose knowledge can illuminate the world, but who also has to solve her family problems in La paradoja de Antares.
The contest will screen another historical horror film, in this case set in 19th-century Macedonia, Goran Stolevski's You Won't Be Alone, a hit at Sudance and is already considered one of the best Australian films. In addition, it features Noomi Rapace as the protagonist, who won the award for female performance last year in Sitges.
And Corin Farrell is the star of Kogonada's After Yang, where he plays a man trying to save a robot. The film was also in the official section of Cannes. Very good reviews have rained down on the psychological thriller Resurrection, the latest from Andrew Semans. The same as Something in the dirt, by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, a film about paranormal phenomena in a Los Angeles building.
From Belgium comes the futuristic Vesper, by Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper, and the proposal from the United Kingdom, Enys men (Mark Jenkin), transfers terror to a mysterious island. Also terrifying are the relations between a Dutch and a Danish family during a vacation that should have been idyllic in Spack no evil, by Danish director Christian Tafdrup.
Fantastic cinema cannot be programmed without counting on Asians. So Sitges has included some of the most outstanding titles of the year such as the South Korean Emergency declaration (Han Jae-rim), the Japanese Mole song final (Takashi Miike) and the Taiwanese Demigod: The legend begins among other gems from the east.
In addition, this year the contest will award the Nosferatu Award to the French actress Brigitte Lahaie and will award the SGAE New Authorship awards to promote the work of new filmmakers. The jury for this award is made up of Cesc Gay, Marta Grau and Alfonso Vilallonga.
