Sitges2024 Crowns Giancarlo Esposito and Welcomes the Return of Highly Acclaimed Filmmakers to Its Screens

Actor Giancarlo Esposito received the Honorary Time Machine Award today shortly before presenting his new film, Please Don't Feed The Children by Destry Allyn Spielberg. Today the 57th SITGES - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia enjoyed a shower of stars, screening at its theaters the new works by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Asif Kapadia, Pupi Avati, James Ward Byrkit and Claude Barras, in addition to Ester Expósito's return to Sitges with The Wailing by Pedro Martín Calero.

The Official Sitges Collection Section's new day had its Grand Fiesta this Friday, giving Festival goers the chance to see the return of some well-known filmographies to its theaters. The American Backyard, the return to directing of one of the fundamental figures in Italian giallo, was one of them. The Prado was the venue for the new nightmare by Pupi Avati, director of The House with Laughing Windows and one of Lamberto Bava's regular collaborators, who opts for chiaroscuro in this portrait of a young psychopath with literary ambitions. 

Also part of our Sitges Collection is the breathy The Wailing, the new film from Pedro Martín Calero. After winning the award for Best Director at last year's San Sebastian Festival, today at the Auditori this filmmaker unveiled this supernatural horror story where a mysterious sound stalks three women, Ester Expósito, Mathilde Ollivier and Malena Villa. Both the filmmaker and part of the crew attended a press conference this morning. Following her visit to the Festival with Jaume Balagueró's Venus in 2022, Expósito commented on her return to the fantastic genre: “genre films found me, making horror is a privilege”. The director enthusiastically recounted his collaboration with the actress, stating that “Ester had been in our minds ever since we started writing the script; she is one of those actresses who knows how to make the character her own”. “First came the genre, then came the story,” says screenwriter Isabel Peña about her predisposition for horror. Regarding his benchmarks, Martín Calero stressed the influence that Mariana Enriquez's literature had on The Wailing: “there is something too powerful in her images”. He also joked about the rewriting power of the editing: “in fact, before I started editing the film it was actually a musical”.

Animation is also a protagonist in this new section, giving us a deluxe double bill today. Claude Barras, one of the masters of contemporary stop motion, landed at the Prado with Savages, his second feature film following the premiere of his debut feature, The Life as a Zucchini. One Oscar nomination later, this Swiss filmmaker returns to the screens with this wild adventure that raises awareness against the destruction of forests. Meanwhile, the Tramuntana theater was transformed into a comic strip with the domestic premiere of Diplodocus. Wojtek Wawszczyk, animator and visual effects artist known for his work on I, Robot and Aeon Flux, turns to directing with this 3D meta-comedy featuring a dinosaur who doesn't know he lives inside a graphic novel that is about to be cancelled. It also offered the domestic premiere of Dong-chul Kim's Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning , an animated nightmare that combines 2D and 3D animation and adapts one of the most popular Korean webtoons in recent years to the big screen.

The icing on the cake for this Sitges Collection day was Please Don't Feed The Children, Destry Allyn Spielberg's feature length debut. The daughter of one of the greatest icons in American moviemaking ventures into genre films with this dystopian thriller about nomadic orphans, global pandemics and a bloodthirsty woman. The film features Michelle Dockery and, of course, the legendary Giancarlo Esposito, who arrived today at the Sitges Film Festival. This American actor, known worldwide for his role as Gus Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, stopped in at the press conference along with Destry Allyn Spielberg to talk about the film and, of course, about the Honorary Time Machine Award he received today in honor of his indisputable creative career, both in genre films and in American television over the last few decades. The actor spoke about his wonderful experience working with Allyn Spielberg: “It's always gratifying to participate in projects with new ideas; working with young people guarantees a different vision of the world”. “I'm interested in genre because of its close relationship with creativity”, explained the film's director. Esposito reflected on the connotations of receiving an award like this, assuring that “I like receiving the Time Machine Award precisely because I feel that I am at the beginning of something, not the end”.

The presence of highly acclaimed filmmakers wasn't limited to Sitges Collection, demonstrating that talent is equally distributed throughout all of the Festival's sections. In the Official Fantàstic In Competition Selection, the Auditori traveled back in time thanks to the screening of 2073, the new rara avis by Asif Kapadia. This filmmaker in love with docu-biopics blends science fiction and documentary in this reinterpretation of La Jettée that deeply moved an enthusiastic Auditori. Following the historic screenings of Bliss and Christmas Bloody Christmas at the Festival, Midnight X-Treme welcomed Joe Begos back home. The Prado experienced the hallucinogenic party that the American choreographed in Jimmy & Stiggs, a punk symphony about a drug addicted film director who makes contact (or not) with violent aliens. Sitges Serial presented the return, in anthology format, of James Ward Byrkit, winner of an award at the Festival in 2012 for the screenplay of Coherence. The first three episodes of Shatter Belt suffocated the Tramuntana theater with three existentialist stories that compose a philosophical sci-fi essay.

Òrbita, on the other hand, welcomed the return to Sitges of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the master of J-horror behind gems like Pulse or Cure. This Japanese director presented his new Cloud, a crime thriller that recovers the filmmaker's obsession with digital spaces, to a packed Auditori. The section wrapped up its edition with a strangely romantic closing film. Gilles Lellouche's Beating Hearts tossed Quentin Dupieux's cast into a blender and whipped up a romantic thriller or a criminal melodrama, or both, as a result.