
The Sitges of the Future Will Be Shaped By Noves Visions and Anima't
13 Aug 2025
Reading 10 min.
If we want to talk about trends and innovation in genre this year, it would be impossible not to touch on two sections that are already fundamental at the Sitges-International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, but which at this edition are becoming vehicles that will, in a sense, transport us to the future of genre, while also proposing an in-depth debate on its language and the evolution of its narratives.
SITGES, August 13, 2025 - Ángel Sala, Mònica Garcia i Massagué and Jordi Sànchez-Navarro the Festival's Artistic Director, the Foundation's General Manager, and the member of the Programming Committee respectively, have just announced that more films have been added to two of the Sitges Film Festival's most popular sections: Noves Visions, dedicated to films that challenge the conventions of the fantastic genre and the cinematic medium itself, and Anima’t, which brings together animated productions that, this year, will demonstrate the transgressive capacities of this cinematic language, both thematically as well as from a formal perspective.
Noves Visions: Formal and Thematic Ambition with an Eye Towards the Future of the Fantastic Genre
Identity, affections, and the possibilities (and limits) of the human condition are fundamental themes in this edition of Noves Visions. All this will be discussed, as an introduction to the section and at a special screening, in About a Hero, by Polish director Piotr Winiewicz, who delves deep into the contemporary debate on artificial intelligence with a bold cocktail of technology, irony, and cinephilia. With an AI-generated script and explicit references to the cinematic work of Werner Herzog, Winiewicz turns his film into a reflection that points towards the future of movie-making and the possibilities of AI.
The Things You Kill, a Turkish production by Iranian director Alireza Khatami, will be responsible for kicking off a wide selection of films that serve as a premonition of the future of genre filmmaking. Khatami's film had a very successful run at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received the award for Best Director in the World Cinema section. Absorbing, unsettling, and unpredictable, The Things You Kill explores male identity (and fragility) with a violence that is passed down from generation to generation.
In a year where horror comedy is an important part of the Festival's leitmotif, in Noves Visions we can find some of the most interesting offerings in this regard. Joining the previously announced Dead Lover, directed by Grace Glowicki, and Fucktoys, directed by Annapurna Sriram, is Every Heavy Thing, directed by Mickey Reece, a thriller loaded with black humor and absurdity that pushes the boundaries of this genre by mixing vaporwave-inspired digital art with classic analog formats. The film stars an icon of fantastic genre films (and one of the guests at this year's Festival), namely Barbara Crampton.
Black humor plays a key role in Alex Philips' Anything That Moves, a film about a food delivery boy who, after having sex for money, finds himself involved in a series of murders that can be traced back to someone who shared his bed with him. Another film that opts for an innovative cinematic language with large doses of humor is Buffet Infinity, directed by Simon Glassman, a story of disappearances told from the point of view of an anonymous viewer watching a local television channel.
Not only horror will receive special treatment in Noves Visions, but also science fiction, the Festival's other major genre flagship. The Infinite Husk, the debut feature film from Aaron Silverstein, is about an alien consciousness that is sent to Earth to spy on a person and, along the way, learns what it means to be human. Entering a more experimental terrain is OBEX, directed by Albert Birney, a film that gets underway when its main character, Conor Marsh, starts playing a state-of-the-art video game that gives the story its title. When his dog Sandy disappears, the fine line between reality and fiction begins to blur, and the director takes us on a journey with radical dimensional leaps and tonal shifts.
Other pieces will also take us to other worlds that are neither light years away nor provoked by cutting-edge technology, but rather by the dark side of individuals themselves. Such is the case with A Grand Mockery, by Adam C. Briggs and Sam Dixon, which tells the story of a man who lives an emotionless life until his mental illnesses begin to warp him and lead him to end up in a tropical jungle. In the same vein, where words fail to describe what we are seeing, Patrik Syversen will be presenting Dawning, an unsettling experiment in the form of psychological horror.
Another film that also plays with the limits of reality is Lucid, by Ramsey Fendall and Deanna Milligan, the story of an art student who begins to use an elixir to break through her creative block, which will take her on a surreal journey through her unconscious, where she will face her inner demons. At times, these intimate journeys will deconstruct circles that are as close to us as the family unit, as in Crocodile Tears, directed by Tumpal Tampubolon, which takes us to a crocodile farm that's as remote as the protagonist's mind: an authoritarian mother whose obsession with controlling her son becomes a disturbing and delusional manifestation of extreme love. Another family affair is Feels Like Home by Gábor Holtai, a thriller that tells the story of a woman who is kidnapped by a family who claim that she is their missing daughter. In order to try to survive while attempting to escape, she will actually have to pass herself off as this other person.
Noves Visions will be presenting productions that put unexpected new spins on classic fantastic genre tropes, such as dystopias, as we will see in The Fin by South Korean director Park Syeyoung (one of the pre-selections for Fantastic 7), which reimagines the myth of the mermaid in a dystopian key, in a story where the journey towards humanity is fraught with pain, bureaucracy, and poetic violence. Textures more characteristic of horror will be deconstructed or reinterpreted, in a way, in offerings such as Forte, directed by Kim Kimbo, a film that transforms a music studio into an enclave of psychological horror, or Be a Good Girl, directed by Louiza Zouzias, an unsettling portrait of power dynamics, emotional dependence, and male control where a submissive woman will have to face her own dark side when the man she loves kidnaps a teenager to replace her. Meanwhile, The Home, by Swedish director Mattias J. Skoglund, offers a serene but deeply unsettling take on emotional and existential horror through a story about loss and the disintegration of identity.
And in The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, by Pete Ohs, we will witness a get-together between friends in the countryside that, after a woman is bit by a tick, turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Another recurring theme in horror movies, both classic and contemporary, that couldn't be missing from this section is religious horror. In Astrid's Saints, filmmaker and visual artist Mariano Baino (best known for his unsettling Dark Waters, which has become a cult film over time) transports us to a limbo between faith and desperation, where a mother clings to the power of saints in an impossible attempt to reverse death. A darker spirituality runs through CAMP, Avalon Fast's unsettling second feature film: a story of impossible redemption, modern witchcraft, and grief that repeat themselves like cursed cycles. In this vein, Noves Visions will close the section with The Holy Boy, Paolo Strippoli's rural fable steeped in unwholesome religiosity, where collective happiness hides a chilling sacrifice that will erupt into one of the most terrifying climaxes we will see at this year's Festival. From Algeria, and arriving straight from the Venice Film Festival, we will be welcoming Yanis Koussim's Roqia, a haunting story of possessions. To cap off the religious segment with a burst of imagination, Transcending Dimensions, the latest from Japanese director Toshiaki Toyoda, combines mysticism and science fiction: an assassin and his lover arrive at a sanctuary searching for a missing monk and, during their quest, they wind up crossing the frontiers of space to another planet, where a magical battle awaits them.
As in previous years, Noves Visions will have an epilogue from Japan with Tengosei~Shaman Star, directed by Hidenori Inoue, an auteur who champions Kabuki theater through geki-cine (Japanese plays filmed with a large budget). Inoue combines humor with the jidaigeki genre (Japanese historical dramas), giving the classic format a fresh new twist.
In the documentary category, we will have El último arrebato, directed by Marta Medina and Enrique López Lavigne, a boundless exercise in metafiction attuned to its legendary object of study: the film with which Iván Zulueta would enter (and be consumed in) film history.
Meanwhile, animation will play a particularly important role in Sitges this year, thanks to the quality and quantity of works that the Anima’t section has in store for us. In addition to the fact that in the Noves Visions section, we’ll be able to enjoy some of the most innovative and irreverent animated works of the year, with a selection of three films that we previously announced at the press conference held at the Fàbrica Moritz on July 16th: Heart of Darkness by Rogério Nunes (which will actually open the Anima't section), Lesbian Space Princess by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese and The Great History of Western Philosophy by Aria Covamonas, all three of which are in competition in both sections.
Anima’t, or the Animated Feature Film as One of the Leading Trends in Contemporary Fantastic Genre
This year, animation will play a leading role at the Sitges Film Festival. Animation with a spectacular quality, spanning all genres and hailing from every corner of the globe. Joining the three above-mentioned films, which will also be part of Noves Visions, there will be a large selection that we already announced at the last press conference (and which you can revisit in more detail via this link): ALL YOU NEED IS KILL by Kenichiro Akimoto, Another World by Tommy Kai Chung Ng, Arco by Ugo Bienvenu, ChaO by Yasuhiro Aoki, and Decorado by Alberto Vázquez.
In addition, we have good news for all fans of classic animation with the screening of the remastered 4K version of Angel's Egg (1985) by Mamoru Oshii, the first original OVA film by the director of Ghost in the Shell, in collaboration with illustrator Yoshitaka Amano. This avant-garde work, based on the Book of Genesis, features a young woman holding an egg in her arms in an underwater city. Another revival is the Hungarian animation classic Willy the Sparrow (1989) by József Gémes, as well as an extensive retrospective dedicated to Italian animation director Bruno Bozzetto, which will include a selection of short films as well as his feature films The SuperVips (Vip, mio fratello superuomo, 1968), a parody of superhero stories, and Allegro non troppo (1976), a tribute to/parody of Fantasia, the famous 1940 Disney musical.
The Anima't section will be rounded off with a series of productions from different corners of the world that take the language of animation to new narrative and aesthetic heights. New this year, this section will feature a series of late-night screenings with some very special and unsettling offerings. Dog of God, by Lauris and Raitis Abele (another gem that we previously put on everyone's radar thanks to the Fantastic 7 initiative), takes us to a medieval village in Livonia where superstition, witchcraft, and lycanthropic legends all come together in a story as dark and damp as its landscape. Stop-motion animation is at its best in Memory Hotel by Heinrich Sabl, a piece that took more than two decades to make, starting at the end of World War II and trapping four characters in a suspended time that is as real as it is dreamlike. Nightmare Bugs, by Japan's Osamu Fukutani and Saku Sakamoto, ventures into a story of ghosts and urban legends that spring from an old apartment complex. Punk spirit and cosmic chaos return in Tamala 2030: A Punk Cat in Dark by t.o.L, the sequel to the 2002 Japanese cult classic, where the protagonist becomes embroiled in a dark feline conspiracy in the heart of Cat Tokyo.
In keeping with Anima't's usual style, we will have such productions as one that is the most playful and exuberant in its form, Endless Cookie by Peter and Seth Scriver, which narrates a journey through time and space starring two half-brothers in search of connection, identity, and freedom. Meanwhile, I Am Frankelda, by Arturo and Roy Ambriz, is a powerful Mexican fable about imagination, fear, and reconciliation between the worlds we inhabit and those we create. Chinese animation will surprise us once again with The Girl that Stole Time, a romantic and emotional story of time travel that has already enjoyed success at festivals including Annecy and Fantasia. Meanwhile, The Square, the first feature film by Kim Bo-sol, is an animated work with a restrained and unsettling beauty that combines the melancholy of impossible love with the political tensions of a hermetic setting like North Korea.
A whole host of new additions to two sections that redefine genre and consolidate the Sitges Film Festival as the flagship event for Fantastic Genre.
List of films
Noves Visions
A Grand Mockery – Adam C. Briggs & Sam Dixon (2024)
About a Hero - Piotr Winiewicz (2024)
Anything that Moves - Alex Phillips (2025)
Astrid’s Saints – Mariano Baino (2024)
Be a Good Girl – Louiza Zouzias (2024)
Buffet Infinity – Simon Glassman (2025)
CAMP – Avalon Fast (2025)
Crocodile Tears - Tumpal Tampubolon (2024)
*Dead Lover – Grace Glowicki (2025)
Dawning - Patrik Syversen (2025)
El último arrebato - Marta Medina & Enrique López Lavigne (2025)
Every Heavy Thing – Mickey Reece (2025)
Feels Like Home - Gábor Holtai (2025)
Forte – Kimbo Kim (2025)
*Fucktoys – Annapurna Sriram (2025)
Lucid – Ramsey Fendall & Deanna Milligan (2025)
OBEX - Albert Birney (2025)
Roqia - Yanis Koussim's (2025)
Tengosei~Shaman Star - Hidenori Inoue (2025)
The Fin - Syeyoung Park (2025)
The Holy Boy - Paolo Strippoli (2025)
The Home – Mattias J. Skoglund (2025)
The Infinite Husk – Aaron Silverstein (2025)
The Last Rapture – Enrique López Lavigne & Marta Medina (2025)
The Things You Kill - Alireza Khatami (2025)
The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick – Pete Ohs (2025)
Transcending Dimensions - Toshiaki Toyoda (2025)
Anima’t
*ALL YOU NEED IS KILL – Kenichiro Akimoto (2025)
*Another World – Tommy Kai Chung Ng (2025)
*Arco – Ugo Bienvenu (2025)
*ChaO – Yasuhiro Aoki (2025)
*Decorado – Alberto Vázquez (2025)
Dog of God – Lauris Abele & Raitis Abele (2025)
Endless Cookie – Peter Scriver & Seth Scriver (2025)
Memory Hotel – Heinrich Sabl (2024)
Nightmare Bugs – Osamu Fukutani & Saku Sakamoto (2024)
I Am Frankelda – Arturo Ambriz & Roy Ambriz (2025)
Tamala 2030: A Punk Cat in Dark – t.o.L. (2025)
The Girl Who Stole Time - Ao Yu & Zhou Tienan (2025)
The Square – Kim Bo-sol (2025)
Noves Visions + Anima’t
*Heart of Darkness – Rogério Nunes (2025)
*Lesbian Space Princess – Emma Hough & Leela Varghese (2025)
*The Great History of Western Philosophy – Aria Covamonas (2025)
Anima’t / Sitges Clàssics
*Angel’s Egg – Mamoru Oshii (1985)
*Willy the Sparrow – József Gémes (1989)
* Previously announced films