The Sitges Film Festival welcomes more than 100,000 moviegoers at its 54th edition

The dates are already set for Sitges 2022, to be held from October 6th to 16th

Sitges was once again the great fantastic film fiesta. The progressive return to normality following the 2020 pandemic edition has resulted in highly successful figures for this year's Festival, which closed its doors this past Sunday, October 17th.

All of the Sitges - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia's venues, the movie theaters (Auditori, Prado, Retiro, Tramuntana and Brigadoon), the industry meetings and press conferences (Garbí and Llevant) and parallel activities for a broad family audience (Mercat Vell) registered a high level of participation from audiences and accredited professionals. All in all, a total of 103,038 viewers confirmed the enthusiasm for fantastic genres, the experience of seeing films in theaters and the industry's excellent health. This figure far exceeds last year's attendance, with 59,315 viewers, and is on course for the pre-pandemic numbers of 2019, a year when 130,206 moviegoers were counted.

For Ángel Sala, the Festival's Director, "the 54th edition's line-up has had an excellent reception by audiences and critics in all its sections, highlighting the diversity of fantastic genre themes, the opening up of new paths in genre as well as the notable participation of Catalan and Spanish productions, the commitment to animated films and the recovery of an important focus on Asian filmmaking. All of this seconded by an important presence of national and international talents from Europe, the United States or Japan who, beyond the honored auteurs and actors, were here to support their projects at the Festival.”

The Director of the Sitges Foundation, Mònica Garcia Massagué emphasizes that "spaces have been multiplied to reinforce the experience of both moviegoers and Festival visitors, who participate through the Festival's parallel activities. In addition, strategic proposals like the WomanInFan program for the promotion of women filmmakers in fantastic film or Sitges Cocoon, focused on innovation and audiovisuals, have achieved an excellent reception both nationally and internationally, which confirms Sitges' prescriptive power.” 

The Festival has just announced the dates for its 55th edition, which will take place from 6th to 16th October 2022 and will celebrate the 40th anniversary of major genre film milestones including Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982), The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) and Conan the Barbarian (John Milius, 1982).