The 55th edition of the International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia was aiming for a record before starting on October 6, and it has. Three days from the end of the contest, the organization has ensured that this 2022 has been a historical record by selling 70,833 unique tickets. In addition, more than 728,200 euros have been raised to date and 130,000 spectators have passed through the event.
"Festivals have a more significant place every time", has pointed out Mónica García, general director of the Sitges Foundation, who has highlighted that some 600 guests have attended the event, including Robert Englund, Edgar Wright or the actor from The squid game, the South Korean Lee Jung-Jae. García has commented that this collection figure has already exceeded that of the 50th anniversary in 2017, when it was 720,582 euros, and is close to that of 2018, which featured a John Carpenter concert and tickets were more expensive.
During the traditional press lunch, the director of the Sitges Festival, Ángel Sala, referred to the "reactivation" of the event. "It is not a return to what was, but a return to what will be. We are in a challenging audiovisual age (...) Fiction is the engine of the culture of dreams and it is important to defend the culture of the fantastic. diversity and democracy", he said. "We have to create new maps, new territories," he added, referring to the young people who work with enthusiasm in this industry. "We are very satisfied with this edition because it has been a complete success."
Asked if these figures were expected, Sala replied that "I'm an optimistic person and I was expecting a brutal comeback from the public because fantastic is in a situation of privileged consumption and people were really looking forward to it. Also because we knew what we were programming and which was very attractive. The figures are attractive but the qualitative success of the proposal is the most important thing for me".
He says that it has been "a very complicated edition to prepare" because "the panorama is very complex and it meant a start from chaos and chaos has been installed on a day-to-day basis. Closing a film is like an X-Files multiplied by 150 films Despite everything, it has been very good because we have a formidable team full of passion, starting with me and Monica down to the last volunteer."
Looking ahead to the 2023 edition, Sala is sure that "it will be better than this year's because when you go up you can only go up more and we all have this ambition" and points out that they are thinking "of a different type of leitmotif. Although there will be winks Specific to films celebrating an anniversary, such as The Exorcist, which will be 50 years ago, something from Jurassic Park or The Nightmare Before Christmas, probably the leitmotifs will not be ephemeris, but will have a different nature and I think they will not be linked to a retrospective. We want to launch an annual program for the recovery of lost fantasy and horror titles and we want to program films with exceptional quality that have not been broadcast for years".
Sala points out that "the retrospective will surely go on one side and the leitmotiv on the other" and that "it could be dedicated to a character or a director makes a carte blanche of films that he considers important." The director of the Festival emphasizes that it is necessary to debate and draw consequences from what is happening with cinemas and not see theaters and platforms as enemies. "The best examples of production that we have seen at the festival are platforms, studios and distributors united."
And he cites Venus, the inaugural film directed by Jaume Balagueró, as a clear example. "This is what is going to work and the festivals are there to show that this works and lead everyone to talk so that the cinema has its exhibition quota, because people want to see movies in the cinema, and not just Marvel ones" .
During the meeting with the journalists, the organization wanted to pay tribute to Álex Gorina, former director of the Sitges Festival, who has been directing the program La finestra indiscreta on Catalunya Ràdio for 35 years. Visibly moved, Gorina urged the organizers to continue "because you are doing very well and there needs to be people who have things clear". He has also encouraged them to continue defending cinema in theaters, since "it is increasingly complicated."
