Nacho Vigalondo Stirs Up Sitges2024 at the Festival's Midway Point
The 57th edition of the SITGES - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia welcomes an intensive In Competition day, featuring the attendance of the team from Daniela Forever, the new film by Nacho Vigalondo. Today Sitges audiences were able to venture into the eagerly awaited prequel to Rosemary's Baby, Apartment 7A. And the Festival paid tribute to cultural journalist Fina Brunet during the day.
It's not every day that you get to revisit one of the most iconic buildings in the history of horror films. The Dakota Building reopens its doors fifty-six years after the theatrical release of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby with Apartment 7A. Following the much-lauded screening of Relic at the Festival's pandemic edition, director Natalie Erika James invited the Prado's audience to this cursed prologue that asks, with the help of actresses Julia Garner and Dianne Wiest, what happened before Rosemary moved to New York.
Just like the Dakota Building, Nacho Vigalondo is back as well. His latest film, Daniela Forever, is part of this year's Official Fantàstic In Competition Selection. Starring Henry Golding and Beatrice Grannò and presented by the Sitges Film Festival as part of Fantastic 7 at the Marché du Film - Cannes Film Festival, this feature film presents a man who decides to take part in a clinical trial in order to control his dreams and be reunited with his deceased girlfriend. Both Vigalondo and the rest of the crew made statements to the press this morning. On whether or not Daniel Forever ties in with his previous filmography, the filmmaker assures that “I didn't want to consciously feed a mythology, I wanted to let things just sweat out”. He has also argued that “your influences always end up appearing in everything you do, you don't need to have them in mind for them to permeate your films; any poetic activity has to do with the unconscious”.
Actress Nathalie Poza spoke about how stimulating it is to narrate “the need to keep alive what isn't; it has been a healing experience”. While the team praised how pleasant it was to work with Vigalondo, he humbly disagreed: “I don't have any kind of discipline, I have been diagnosed with ADHD as an adult”. Regarding the decision to shoot part of the film in Betacam, the filmmaker assured that “the only reason we're afraid of this is because A24 hasn't done it before”. Actress Beatrice Grannò, regarding the explicit reference to Evangelion, tells us that it was a leap into the void: “Nacho told me to have faith, that many people were going to love the reference”. Right before the screening of Daniela Forever at the Auditori, the Festival paid tribute to Fina Brunet, Catalan journalist, radio and TV presenter and friend of the Festival, being the host of many mythical screenings throughout the history of Sitges.
Today the Auditori welcomed numerous films competing to be this year's winners. One of them is Meanwhile on Earth, the return to Sitges of the filmmaker who moved the Festival with his I Lost My Body in 2019. Jérémy Clapin dives into action in real image with this tale of extraterrestrials that generated very good reactions at the last Berlin Festival. Right after that, the Festival's main screen received Night Silence (Cisza Nocna) by Bartosz M. Kowalski. This Polish director arrived in Sitges with a survival horror movie where an actor admitted to a nursing home must defend himself from a grotesque threat.
Right after a lunch break, the Auditori resumed the section with Animal by Emma Benestan, a French rarity that mixes bullfights in a small region in the south of France with wild beasts that cause mysterious disappearances, and Sister Midnight by Karan Kandhari, a portrait of a rebellious and wild woman as a result of an arranged marriage in Bombay. Closing the day was the evening screening of JT Mollner's Strange Darling, an unpredictable cat-and-mouse game praised by Stephen King and featuring Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner and Barbara Hershey in the star-studded cast. We've been told it's best not to know too much about this film, so watch out for spoilers while standing in line.
Noves Visions also experienced an intense day with the screening at Prado of a triptych that perfectly concentrates this section's disruptive essence. The title itself of Michael Felker 's Things Will Be Different seems to be a declaration of intent, presenting an experimental sci-fi puzzler ideal for any fan of films by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. Sam and Andy Zuchero presented their first feature film, Love Me, in this section. Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun play a buoy and a satellite in a love story that could only exist in Sitges. Finally, Ryan J. Sloan, an electrician by profession, shared his debut feature Gazer at the Prado, a paranoid thriller shot in 16 mm that altered an entire theater's notion of time.