William Fichtner and Peter Chan, a Double Victory

On this second Thursday of the Festival, two awards were presented to international artists. Peter Chan received the Grand Honorary Award, and William Fichtner received the Time Machine Award for his prolific career in contemporary audiovisual productions. The first, a 21st-century Asian giant, has helped to break down boundaries between the Asian and Western film industries. The second, an indispensable face in American film and television series over the last thirty years, presented Talamasca: The Secret Order, by Anne Rice.

Long live a Colossus of Asian Cinema

At the same time, legendary producer Peter Chan also received the Grand Honorary Award on the same day he presented the semi-autobiographical thriller She Has No Name, his dazzling return to directing after the sports epic Leap, released in 2020.

With his humanistic and emotional vision, Chan's films elevate him as one of the most versatile figures on the contemporary Asian scene. His career path is that of a warrior who began in the golden age of Hong Kong in the 1980s -with delightful comedies from the Golden Harvest Company such as Armour of God and Wheels on Meals, filmed in pre-Olympic Barcelona- and has become an essential creator in breaking down industrial boundaries between Asian and Western cinema.

In She Has No Name, presented in the Òrbita section, Chan takes a close look at true crime in a melodrama masquerading as a thriller that transports us to 1940s Shanghai, in the midst of the Japanese imperial occupation, to tell us the story of one of the most infamous unsolved murder cases in Chinese history.

The Actor of the Thousand Journeys

With more than seventy productions to his credit, William Fichtner has left behind a filmography full of big hits. He has excelled so many times in both film and television - remember that bank manager who stands up to the Joker in the initial robbery scene in The Dark Knight? - that the main question we should be asking ourselves when dealing with a talent of his caliber isn't which films and series he's appeared in, but rather which ones he hasn't.

From popular feature films such as Armageddon, The Perfect Storm, Black Hawk Down, Heat, or Crash to series like Invasion or the famous Prison Break, where he will be remembered as the calculating FBI agent Alexander Mahone, Fichtner has even lent his voice to Ken Rosenberg in a video game as highly acclaimed by the millennial generation as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

In recognition of his talent and significant presence in the American audiovisual industry, the Sitges Film Festival presented Fichtner with the Time Machine Award at the Meliá Auditorium before the European premiere of Talamasca: The Secret Order, by Anne Rice, a new series about a mysterious society that investigates the supernatural, which premieres on Sunday, October 26th on AMC+.

During today's talk on the occasion of the series' presentation, William Fichtner and veteran executive producer Mark Johnson (Donnie Brasco, Breaking Bad) confirmed that it is “a spy story that expands the fantastic universe of the writer of Interview with the Vampire” with all kinds of creatures that dwell in the darkest recesses of the night.

The Asphalt Jungle

Without a doubt, if there's one thing that deserves to be pointed out when talking about Park Hoon-jung, it's his aura as a unique creator in contemporary crime movies. This filmmaker from the new wave of Korean noir is the man behind the screenplay for I Saw the Devil, directed by Kim Jee-woon, one of the most gripping psychopathic crime thrillers in recent decades, as well as the director of New World, a brutal, fist-fighting thriller -screened at Sitges 2013- that shines thanks to its scenes of raw, primitive, almost tribal violence in a turbulent Korea ravaged by a profound crisis of values.

Hoon-jung, who has worked with big names in Asian neo-noir including the magnificent Choi Min-Sik (Old Boy, Lady Vengeance) and Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game), now transfers his usual storylines of tension on the streets to a context where “the city is becoming more and more like a jungle,” as he stated at the press conference. Co-produced by Fine Cut (The Chaser) and presented in competition this Thursday in the Òrbita section, Tristes Tropiques closely follows the bloody revenge carried out by a group of young assassins in a brutal descent halfway between the urban and the jungle realms.

Hoon-jung also revealed the difficulties involved in filming in Thailand's natural landscapes, the need to “adapt the script to a cast of different Asian nationalities,” and his strong inspiration drawn from European film noir and Hollywood action films of the 1980s and 1990s. As a surprise, before the end of the press conference, our Artistic Director Ángel Sala announced that today is Hong-jung's birthday, and the attending press congratulated him with a round of applause and singing “Happy Birthday.” The event was repeated in the Auditorium, with hundreds of attendees wishing the director a very happy birthday.

Revenge in a Loop

The event also served as a showcase for an ingenious independent science fiction thriller made by three siblings. The screenwriters and producers of American Vandal and Cobra Kai, co-creators of the fascinating debut feature The Block Island Sound, Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus, have joined forces once again in Redux Redux. The revenge of a mother, played by Michaela McManus, following the death of her daughter, shapes the obsessive drive of this thrilling tale set in a small-town America of parallel realities.

Before the screening at the Auditorium, a short film by the ESCAC entitled Terapias y mazmorras (Therapies and Dungeons) was shown, which deals with what is perhaps the most refreshing role-playing game for couples going through a crisis. Its director, Adrián Pachón, is part of the Catalonia Film and Audiovisual School's commitment to promoting emerging talent internationally within the framework of the Sitges Film Festival.

A Comedy with a Hallmark of Style

A master of edgy and bizarre humor, Yorgos Lanthimos has returned to the Festival that has been celebrating his filmmaking since 2009, the year of his disturbing Dogtooth. His films are the closest thing to a flavorfully poisoned gift, transporting the keys to black comedy into a terrain of perverse strangeness. Lanthimos, winner of awards at Cannes for The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which also won the Critics' Award at Sitges 2017, now composes another circus of cruelty through a cutting portrait of denialism.

A free remake of the delirious Korean film Save the Green Planet by Jang Joon-hwan, Bugonia moves away from the baroque style of the Oscar-winning Poor Creatures to continue perfecting his unmistakable style in a chamber piece filmed with his customary cinematographer, Robbie Ryan, and starring the immense Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. Unrestrained and dazzling, Bugonia grips us with the kidnapping of a CEO by two conspiracy-obsessed young men convinced that she's an alien who wants to destroy the planet.

Ghosts in the Catskills

An important piece in the Panorama section, Mother of Flies marks the triumphant return of Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, and John Adams. For the third consecutive time, this trio of directors presents a film in Sitges, following the acclaimed Hell Hole and Where the Devil Roams. Their new project is a twisted fairy tale about a woman who resorts to black magic to deal with a terminal diagnosis.

Filmed in the forests of the Catskills, in southeastern New York, this spine-chilling ghost story about teenage grief and spiritual collapse won the Cheval Noir Award for Best Film at the latest edition of the Fantasia Festival. At an edition that highlights the ghostliest cinema, Mother of Flies undoubtedly took center stage.