Unspooling in the beach town of the same name, the 58th edition of the Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia (9-19 October) will highlight the best in genre cinema, ranging from the fully fantastical to the fantastical-adjacent. The event will open with Alpha [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Julia Ducournau
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Through its run, the festival will also give out a handful of prizes, including the Grand Honorary Award to prolific Spanish actress Carmen Maura and Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, the Time Machine Award to British actor Benedict Cumberbatch and Italian master of the spaghetti western Enzo G Castellari, and the WomanInFan Award to US producer Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator, The Walking Dead series).

Sitges’ main competitive strand, the Official Fantastic Competition, for feature films not yet released in Spain, boasts a selection of European favourites from recent festivals, including Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prix winner A Useful Ghost [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]. Prizes in the section will go to the top films, and there will also be Awards for Best Director, Best Performances, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Special Effects and Best Music.

Sitges Collection, the strand of out-of-competition works comprising acclaimed films, features a handful of similarly recognisable works. These include Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia [+leggi anche:
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Arco, the debut feature by French comic-book artist and animator Ugo Bienvenu, will pull double duty in both the Sitges Collection and the Anima’t section. The Berlinale Teddy Award winner Lesbian Space Princess by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese will play in both Anim’at and the Noves Visions section, for films that dabble in formal experimentation. Other Noves Visions selections include Alireza Khatami's Sundance prizewinner The Things You Kill [+leggi anche:
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Òrbita, which is dedicated to works “bordering on the fantastic”, includes thrillers, martial-arts flicks and adventure tales. Asian movies – or films somehow connected to Asia – often take a front seat in this section, leading to the inclusion of Gabriele Mainetti’s Forbidden City [+leggi anche:
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As part of its membership of the Méliès International Festival Federation, Sitges will also hand out its Méliès d’Argent Awards for Best European Production in both the feature-film and short-film categories. The winning shorts of the Anima’t section and the Official Fantastic Competition for shorts will both immediately qualify for Oscar consideration.