Edgar Wright, the director who has made magic in cinema with pop culture, will receive an award in Sitges

The International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, which is held annually in Sitges, has announced new features for its next edition, which will take place in October under the neon lights tribute to the movie Tron.

The Sitges Festival pays tribute to 'Tron' in an edition that will bring the latest from Dario Argento

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The main one is the decision to award the British filmmaker Edgar Wright, perpetrator of the zombie trilogy nicknamed "The Bugler" and starring actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost: Zombies Party, Fatal Weapon and Welcome to the End of the World, the Machine of the World award. time, a recognition that began in 1992 with Sam Raimi and last year went to director Neill Blomkamp.

Edgar Wright also co-wrote, produced and directed Scott Pilgrim Against the World, directed the fast-paced crime action film with music as an essential element of its rhythmBaby Driver, and has recently released his latest works to the screens: Last Night in Soho and the documentary The Sparks Brothers, that coexisted at the box office.

Genre film director Neil Marshall will also receive the same recognition at the 55th edition of the festival. The author of Dog Soldiers, one of the most popular British horror films or The Descent, has now focused his career on television, directing episodes of Game of Thrones, Hannibal and Westworld or the pilots of Black Sails, Constantine and Timeless. In 2018, he directed Lost in Space for Netflix and in 2021 he released The Reckoning. Sitges will premiere The Lair, a return to the origins about a pilot who has to survive inside a bunker where biological weapons are hidden.

Hispanic mythologies

Carlota Pereda will bring her rural horror debut Cerdita to the screens of the Catalan festival and Rodrigo Sorogoyen As bestas, after passing through Cannes. Irati, by Paul Urkijo, a fantasy mythology set in medieval Euskadi, will also premiere; Viejos, a horror film directed by Raúl Cerezo and Fernando González Gómez (La passenger), recently screened at Fantasia in Montreal; Astonishing Elisa is the new film by Sadrac González (Black Hollow Cage), a fantastic thriller starring Asier Etxeandia, and the feature film debut by Luis Tinoco, La paradoja de Antares, will also be seen in Sitges for its European premiere.

More international news

The festival announces that Goran Stolevski's debut folk-horror film, You Won't Be Alone, will be screened, set in an isolated mountain village in 19th-century Macedonia. After Yang, Kogonada's futuristic science fiction film with Colin Farrell about a post-human world. The psychological thriller Resurrection, directed by Andrew Semans and starring Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth. Low budget science fiction with Something in the Dirt by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. The post-apocalyptic future in the Belgian dystopia Vesper, by Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper; and the also Belgian Megalomaniac, a spooky and gore film directed by Karim Ouelhaj, winner of Fantasia 2022.

Horror will be present in Mark Jenkin's British Enys Men, in Guillaume Nicloux's The Tower, and in the social horror of Speak No Evil, where director Christian Tafdrup delivers a generous amount of sadism and cruelty.

Asian cinematography, don't miss it

One of the regulars of the contest, the Japanese Takashi Miike, will close The Mole Song trilogy with The Mole Song Final, a wacky comedy about an undercover cop who becomes a yakuza. From South Korea, the thriller Emergency Declaration, directed by Han Jae-rim, where a commercial plane is forced to make an emergency landing. And from Taiwan, Huang proposes with Demigod: The Legend Begins a fantastic martial arts film

In the field of animation, the Anima't section announces its opening film, which will be Oink, directed by Mascha Halberstad in stop motion about a nine-year-old girl who receives a little pig as a gift from her grandfather. The French Princesse Dragon, by Anthony Roux and Jean-Jacques Denis, about a girl raised by dragons who will live a journey of discovery. From Colombia will come The Other Way, by Diego Felipe Guzmán, a satirical story for adults that questions the habits of the world in which we live.

In the field of documentaries, the opening title of Sitges Documenta will be Lynch/Oz, by Alexandre O. Philippe, which explores David Lynch's obsession with Victor Fleming's 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz. Mad in Belgium is a journey through the strange nature of a certain Belgian cinema that has stood out for its risk and eccentricity. And Scott Leberecht's documentary Jurassic Punk about computer animation pioneer Steve 'Spaz' Williams.

Tributes

The festival is committed to giving Boris Karloff his place on the throne of a horror film legend, screening Thomas Hamilton's documentary Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster.

French actress Brigitte Lahaie will receive this year's Nosferatu Award. Parallel to her work in pornographic cinema, Lahaie participated in genre films by Jean Rollin, such as Fascination and The Grapes of Death, and by Jess Franco, such as Los predatoras de la noche. Later, she also had small roles in Philip Kaufman's Henry & June, or more recently in Fabrice du Welz's Calvary.

All these novelties are added to those already announced in June in relation to the Official Section. Predominantly European films that bring different perspectives to the fantastic from directors with a long history and Sitges regulars, such as Dario Argento, Quentin Dupieux or Peter Strickland, along with names that stand out such as Hanna Bergholm or Léa Mysius. The premiere in Spain of the Galician director Alberto Vázquez, winner of three Goya awards, with his Unicorn Wars, an anti-war animated feature film with a French co-production that has recently competed in the official section of the Annecy festival. O Coupez!, the opening film at Cannes 2022, a remake directed by Michel Hazanavicius