The 53rd Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia kicks off from 8-18 October, promising 11 days of the very best films in the genres of horror, fantasy and animation – this year online and off, with many other parallel events.
The Sitges film festival started in 1968 as the First International Week of Fantasy and Horror Movies – and has since grown to become one of the most important genre festivals in the world. Over the years, stars such as Quentin Tarantino, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes, Cameron Diaz, Viggo Mortensen, Terry Gilliam, Tony Curtis, Jon Voight and Susan Sarandon have all attended the festival – with Sam Neill and Aaron Paul attending in 2019.
This year, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the popular seaside town of Sitges has put most of the programme online, but there are still a number of in-person screenings, with the festival finishing off with a remastered 4K showing of David Lynch’s The Elephant Man.
In total there are 254 productions including feature films, shorts and documentaries, at seven different screening venues – four of them being movie theatres offering reserved advance seating with social distancing, as well as full sanitation measures and controls at all venues to guarantee a comfortable and safe experience for all viewers.
This year Sitges promises more than a dozen debut features, a significant number of female directors in a year also featuring a large number of Catalan and Spanish productions, as well as the most comprehensive selection of animated films and ‘daring independent auteur films’. Online, at the Festival’s Virtual Cinema, 155 productions from the official line-up will also be screened.
The 53rd edition will include Sitges Film Hub activities, 11 outdoor animated film screenings at the Hort de Can Falç and 4 at the Miramar Cultural Center, online workshops, as well as shared reading sessions at Sitges’ Libraries. There will be 10 stands in the new Fanshop Area in front of the San Sebastian Chapel and 10 food trucks overlooking the sea to ‘recharge your batteries’. Unfortunately, however, this year there will not be the famous Zombie Walk.
Click here for full details of the line-up of films.
Click here for all ticket details.
