Paul Urkijo and Emilie Blichfeldt Rewrite Folklore from a Female Perspective

An impressive array of films today! Movies including Gaua, by our comrade Paul Urkijo, and The Ugly Stepsister, the feature debut from Emilie Blichfeldt, addressed the question of gender in films that rewrite tradition from a female point of view and display a brilliant sense of fantastic genre. This year's huge sensation in Sitges, Ben Leonberg's highly original Good Boy, a haunted house tale told from a dog's perspective, also landed today. And to top it all off, veteran Mexican actor Hugo Stiglitz received the 2025 Nosferatu Award.

A Haunted House with a Canine Perspective

Why do dogs sometimes just stand there staring at a place where there's nothing or bark for no reason? In 2009, Pixar's marvelous movie Up gave us a possible answer in the form of a gag. When a dog stands still pointing in a specific direction, it's probably because it suspects that what's hiding there is... a squirrel! However, there are other answers that are much darker and more sinister than this one.

The film Good Boy, director Ben Leonberg's debut feature co-written with screenwriter Alex Cannon, makes the most of the premise to tell a terrifying haunted house story with the high-concept peculiarity that it's told from the sweet perspective of Indy, an adorable retriever puppy who has just moved to a house in the country with his owner Todd, played by actor Shane Jensen. There, he discovers that the house is plagued by mysterious presences and must fight against the evil forces that want to take Todd away.

Interestingly enough, the dog starring in the film is the director's own pet, and he has been developing this project to turn him into a movie star for years. The film, a major attraction at the Festival thanks to its narrative originality, is the talk of the town following its screening as an in competition film in the Official Fantàstic Selection.

Icon of Mexican Film

It's easy for the name Hugo Stiglitz to echo in the memory of many viewers. The letters of his name appear prominently featured in an ironically postmodern scene from Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, introducing the renegade ex-Nazi soldier played by German actor Til Schweiger in 2009. This detail further magnifies the figure of the actor behind the reference.

Mexican actor Hugo Stiglitz, an icon of Mexican film in the 1970s, received the Nosferatu Award at the Meliá Auditorium at the age of 85. His filmography includes more than 100 titles, among which are true B-movie gems such as Tintorera: Killer Shark, Night of a Thousand Cats, The Enchanted Island, El llanto de la tortuga and Survive!, working for directors as well-known at our Festival as René Cardona, José Antonio de la Loma, Umberto Lenzi or Gonzalo Martínez Ortega.

Die-hard fans of on-screen fights and stunts witnessed the awarding of the Nosferatu to the great Stiglitz just before the screening of the highly anticipated The Furious, one of the most important action films of the year. Directed by actor Kenji Tanigaki, an expert in martial arts choreography, this Chinese-Hong Kong co-production filmed in Bangkok immerses us in a thriller of violence and urban corruption. Its face-to-face confrontation scenes thrilled fans of this genre, who recognized Asian talents of the stature of Joe Taslim and Miao Xie.

And, as could only be expected, on the day we presented a Nosferatu Award to the star of a monstrous classic like Nightmare City, a new apocalyptic tale hit the screen, bringing a breath of fresh air to the infinite narrative of the dead rising from their graves. We're referring to We Bury the Dead, directed by Australian director Zak Hilditch and starring Daisy Ridley. All this on the same day that hundreds of people took part in Zombie Walk 2025, invading the town and infecting its streets with a playful spirit.

Night of the Witches

Impassioned by legends of the night, spirits, and witches, director Paul Urkijo Alijo, a friend and creature of this house, presented us with the world premiere of his feature film as both director and screenwriter. Gaua expands the mythological universe that this director, born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, has been weaving since 2010 with films shot in Basque that absorb legends from Basque folklore, such as Errementari and Irati, both screened in Sitges. The first, Urkijo's commendable feature debut, rewrote his favorite childhood story, unleashing a politically charged fable through beautiful 19th-century Basque. The second, winner of the Audience Choice Award and Best Special Effects at Sitges 2022, could well be defined as the Basque Excalibur. Its powerful medieval adventure story, halfway between magic and romance, unfolded as a beautiful ode to the memory of nature, starring an epic Eneko Sagardoy.

Today, Urkijo returned to the reign of Sitges like a warrior on horseback following the battle. Gaua is his third feature film at the Festival, and the result is stunning. We return to folklore, but this time the camera focuses on witches, legends, and spirits of the night to “turn the original meaning of the coven upside down”-in tune with the literary heritage of the 20th century- as a great lie of the Spanish Inquisition to repress territories in the 18th century, as he explained at a press conference.

The film takes us back to a time of witch hunts. Kattalin, the young woman played by Yune Nogueiras, flees from her husband in the middle of the night, leaving the farmhouse where she lives. Lost in the darkness of the forest, she senses a presence that is pursuing her and ends up meeting three women, played by Elena Irureta, Ane Gabaraín, and Iñake Irastorza, who are sharing stories and gossip while washing clothes by the river. From this premise, Urkijo constructs another marvel of folk horror spoken in Basque.

The filmmaker recalled his preference for pagan mythology over Christian mythology, the importance of filming in “natural locations in the Basque Country,” taking advantage of “the real, organic shadows of trees” in scenes with a fairy-tale atmosphere. He also clarified that the script for Gaua draws on different legends to create a non-linear story divided into chapters. Kattalin embarks on a journey undermined by the repression of the most primitive masculinity, where Inguma, the god of dreams who “sneaks into the sleeper's house and attacks him like the incubus in Füssli's The Nightmare,” and Mari, goddess of fertility, mother and lady of nature, are ever-present.

The Terrors of the Body

Fables are an opportunity to transform the female narrative. Aware of this, Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt conceived a brilliant debut feature that reimagines the traditional fairy tale through a brutal satire in line with the feminist spirit of Coralie Fargeat's The Substance, not without its share of bodily horrors. Nominated at the latest edition of the Berlinale and a winner in the midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival, The Ugly Stepsister is a sinister reworking of Cinderella that turns the popular tale upside down. As a result, the focus shifts from the famous princess, idealized in Disney's dreamlike classic, to her stepsister Elvira, who is obsessed with becoming the most beautiful and desired young woman in the kingdom. Norwegian actress Lea Myren plays the lead in this wild story of self-discovery - conceived during a creative nap - which, as the director shared, “offers a different point of view that allows us to redefine the original archetype.”

Blichfeldt gave a powerful speech about “the tyranny of beauty” and the fact that, for centuries, a cultural idea of women as objects coveted by men has prevailed, which is still very strong in our era, marked by patriarchy and “an industry that has sequestered our own gaze and capitalizes on our insecurities.” The director added that “although Elvira is a character from the 17th century, we can feel represented in her, because she continues to speak to the social pressure that women still feel today.”

However, Blichfeldt also stressed how essential a sense of humor and sisterhood are to survive the demands of patriarchy. “It's important to laugh at what worries us. Humor allows us to distance ourselves from what worries us, and there's something cathartic about that.”