'Visage', by Tsai Ming-liang, opens the Noves Visions category

Noves Visions has been one of the Festival’s most consolidated and indisputable categories. This year, its most eclectic section continues to bring together films of the most diverse nationalities, although some of the most innovative and transgressive proposals in today’s movie scene are still coming from Asia.

Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang will be opening the Noves Visions category with his latest film, Visage. Starring Fanny Ardant, Laetitia Casta and Jean-Pierre Léaud, the movie is a tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of nouvelle vague. An old Festival acquaintance, Tsai Ming-liang has presented other films in Sitges like The Hole (1998) or The Wayward Cloud (2005), that on the Special Jury Award.

Noves Visions is made up of three subsections: Ficció (Fiction), No Ficció (Non-Fiction) and Discovery. The three subsections compete for the award for best feature film in the Noves Visions category. There are also two special mentions for the best features in No Ficció and Discovery.

As every year, and with the collaboration of the SGAE and the Buñuel Institute, the Nova Autoria section continues with its aim to discover new talent and promote up-and-coming audiovisual creators, as well as to program the best thesis projects by students from the different participating film schools.

The in-competition NV Ficció section is made up of a wide, hybrid selection of films from the fantasy genre that explore more personal and, at the same time suggestive visions: Independencia by Raya Martin, the latest work of art from the young Filipino that has shaken up a section of worldwide critics; Nymph by Pen-ek Ratanaruang, an intimist and ghostly story told with the usual sensuality of the director of Invisible Waves; the shocking Russian film Morphia, by Sergei Balabanov (Cargo 200); the Indonesian thriller The Forbidden Door and the Indian The Forest (the directing debut of the filmmaker who has taken half the world by storm with the short film Little Terrorist). Completing this section are the British Bronson (on the life of a famous criminal) and White Lightnin' (on the life of a possessed tap-dancer), the Danish Deliver Us from Evil, the direct horror movie directed by Ti West, The House of the Devil, the Canadian Pontypool (about a violent virus that attacks a town)and the Australian survival film Van Diemen's land.

The NV Discovery section brings fresh air and furious originality with three films that will have everyone talking in the near future: the intriguing Hungarian 1; Colin, an amateur film that has become an unexpected box office hit in Great Britain; and the experimental French film Amer.

The NV No Ficció section presents three exceptional documentaries. On the one hand, the unexpected, beautiful film by Manuel Huerga (Salvador) about the space race, Son & Moon. Diario de un astronauta. On the other hand, a morbid American documentary so harsh it will make audience’s hair stand on end: Cropsey. And finally Best Worst Movie, a curious documentary about what is, for some, the worst movie in history: Troll 2.