Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris will receive the Grand Honorary Award at a Sitges Festival hitting its high point with a concert by John Carpenter

The Festival, which will take place from October 4th to 14th, reveals many of the films that will be a part of its Official Selection

One of the most charismatic stars in contemporary film will be at Sitges 2018. Nicolas Cage will be touching down at the Festival to receive a Grand Honorary Award and present Mandy, the thriller by Panos Cosmatos that he also stars in

Sitges will also be welcoming Ed Harris, an actor with a long-standing career in genre cinema, to present him with a Grand Honorary Award

John Carpenter will be visiting Sitges 2018. The master of fantasy will be arriving at the film competition to offer a concert with scores from his movies –all created by him– particularly including Halloween, the horror classic that will be celebrating its 40th anniversary at the Festival. It will be Carpenter’s only show in Spain as a part of his European tour, and the first time he’ll be visiting the Festival

Nicolas Cage, one of the most popular faces on the big screen, will be receiving a Grand Honorary Award at Sitges 2018. The Californian actor, who began his career in the early 80s, has starred in big hits from all genres, with a considerable soft spot for action movies and thrillers. Vampire’s Kiss (Robert Bierman, 1989), Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990), Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis, 1995), The Rock (Michael Bay, 1996), Con Air (Simon West, 1997), Face/Off (John Woo, 1997), Wicker Man (Neil LaBute, 2006), Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaughn, 2010) or the more recent Dog Eat Dog (Paul Schrader, 2016), Mom and Dad (Brian Taylor, 2017) and Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, 2018), presented in Sitges, are just a few of the films that have marked his career.

The American actor, producer and director Ed Harris will receive the Festival’s most important prize, the Grand Honorary Award, which will also be presented to director Peter Weir, as previously announced. Harris’ career, which began in the late 70s, is chockfull of great fantastic genre hits and performances, including the outstanding Abyss (James Cameron, 1989), Apollo 13 (Ron Howard, 1995), The Rock (Michael Bay, 1996), The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998), A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005), or the more recent Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho, 2013) and Mother! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017). He is currently participating in the Westworld series (Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, 2016), for which he has just been nominated for an Emmy as Best Actor in a Drama Series, and he will be back soon to film the third season of the HBO smash hit. Harris also directed two films, the biopic Pollock (2000) and the western Appaloosa (2008), and takes part in the new Netflix production Kodachrome, by Mark Raso.

One of the essential figures in cult horror movies from the past few decades, John Carpenter, will be one of the star guests at Sitges 2018, where he will display his talent as a soundtrack composer. The scores from The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, Christine, Prince of Darkness and many other films–in addition to the previously mentioned Halloween– will submerge fans in Carpenter’s unique universe. With this concert, which has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of Last Tour and will be held on Saturday October 13th at the Meliá Sitges Auditorium, the Festival is opening up to new proposals in the fantastic genre field. Tickets will be going on sale starting today at 12:30 pm, through the Festival website. To access the concert, with limited seating, Festival credentials will not be valid.

Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris and John Carpenter will be joining the other previously confirmed big names at Sitges 2018: director Peter Weir, actresses Pam Grier, Traci Lords, Helga Liné and actor Ron Perlman, all prize winners at this year’s Festival.

Official Selection

Sitges 2018 will be offering today’s best genre cinema from all over the world. The Festival already announced the screening of the latest films by Gaspar Noé, Lars Von Trier, David Robert Mitchell, Alice Rohrwacher or Pascal Laugier, among others, which will now be joined by a remarkable list of titles that will delight fans.

The Catalan production The Year of the Plague – an adaptation of the novel by Marc Pastor The Year of the Plague– directed by Carlos Martín Ferrera, will be presented in the Sitges 2018 Official Selection. Coproduced by Televisió de Catalunya, the film stars Ivan Massagué, Ana Serradilla, Miriam Giovanelli, Silvia Abril and Juanra Bonet.

Latin American movies will have a strong footing in the Sitges 2018 Official Selection. The films Animal, by Armando Bo II, and Murder me, Monster, by Alejandro Fadel, will be heading the new features from Argentina. The Columbian The Sacrifice, by Jaime Osorio Márquez, and the Portuguese Diamantino, by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, confirm the excellent moment genre is having in these countries.

Arriving from Japan is Inuyashiki, by Shinsuke Sato, an adaptation of Hiroya Oku’s science fiction manga; Laplace's Witch, Takashi Miike’s new incursion into the thriller genre, and Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, the four-hand anime directed by filmmaker Toshiya Shinohara and screenwriter Mari Okada, who debuts in direction.

More independent style American cinema will carry a prominent weight in the Official Selection with films like Elizabeth Harvest, by Sebastian Gutiérrez; Clara, by Akash Sherman; I Think We're Alone Now, by Reed Morano, starring Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning; Nancy, by Christina Choe, starring Steve Buscemi; Prospect, by Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl, and The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot, by Robert D. Krzykowski.

Sitges 2018 confirms the talent of directors who’ve attended previous editions of the film competition, welcoming their new productions. As in the case American director Jim Hoskins, who surprised audiences in 2016 with The Greasy Strangler and now returns with An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn; Frenchman Quentin Dupieux, director of films like Réalité, Wrong Cops or Rubber, who will be presenting Au Poste!; Polish Agnieszka Smoczynska, director of The Lure (Sitges 2015) with Fugue; Iranian Mani Haghighi (A Dragon Arrives!, Sitges 2016) with Pig, and Canadian Colin Minihan (Grave Encounters, It Stains the Sands Red) with What Keeps You Alive.

Òrbita

The section dedicated to thrillers, action and adventure movies will be opening with Asher, by Michael Caton-Jones, starring Ron Perlman, who will be in Sitges to present the film and receive an honorary award. Other films that will be presented are Arctic, by Joe Penna, starring Mads Mikkelsen; Galveston, by Mélanie Laurent, starring Elle Fanning; Operation Red Sea, one of the biggest hits in the history of Chinese cinema, directed by Dante Lam, and The Spy Gone North, by Yun Jong-bin.

Anima’t

The latest animation productions will be at the Festival, which will be screening Michael Mort’s Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires, a horror movie satire; the Russian stop motion film Hoffmaniada, by Stanislav Sokolov; and Naoko Yamada’s anime Liz and the Blue Bird, plus the Brazilian Tito e os pássaros, by Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar and André Catoto.

Noves Visions

The Noves Visions section will present a selection of films exploring new narrative channels, with a strong European presence, as in the case of Adam Sedlák’s Domestique; Lazar Bodroza’s Ederlezi Rising; Pavel Khvaleev’s Involution; Tilman Singer’s Luz or The Invocation of Enver Simaku, by the director from Alicante, Spain, Marco Lledó Escartín. Arriving from Brazil is O clube dos canibais, by Guto Parente. Asia will also play an outstanding role in this section, with films like the Japanese One Cut of the Dead, by Shinichiro Ueda; the Filipino Season of the Devil, by Lav Diaz and the co-production between Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan, Ten Years Thailand, jointly directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Aditya Assarat, Wisit Sasanatieng and Chulayarnnon Siriphol.

Panorama Fantàstic

With its strong, independent character, Panorama Fantàstic will be bringing the most daring horror that exists. One of the featured films is St. Agatha, by Darren Lynn Bousman, director of sequels II, III and IV of the Saw saga and of other films that have been screened in Sitges, like Mother’s Day, 11-11-11 or Abattoir. Another Festival friend, Mexican Isaac Ezban (The Incident, The Similars) will be presenting Parallel. Other outstanding productions that can be seen in this section are Sergey Mokritsky’s A Rough Draft; Daniel Goldhaber’s Cam; Patrick Condon’s Incredible Violence.; Justin P. Lange’s The Dark; Xu Jizhou’s The Liquidator or Jenn Wexler’s The Ranger, many of them debut features.

Brigadoon and Sitges Zombie Walk 2018

The Brigadoon section announces the screening of four outstanding documentaries. R. Robles Rafatal’s Navajeros, Censores y Nuevos Realizadores, focusing on the birth and development of criminal cinema; Oskar Teixidor’s Director Z, el Vendedor de Ilusiones, about the Basque filmmaker José María Zabalza; Pere Marzo Font’s Goodbye Ringo, about the legendary Esplugues City studios, the stage for dozens of spaghetti westerns, and Simon Hernández’s La Venganza de Jairo, focusing on the Columbian filmmaker Jairo Pinilla, who visited Sitges during its 2013 edition.

In a Special Screening, we will be able to see the episode El Hombre que Vendió su Alma, a part of the Mañana puede ser verdad series and directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador in 1962 for Argentinean television. It is a recently recovered and digitalized TV document. Iván Zulueta’s classic, Arrebato, will be screened in a new restored copy that will be produced very soon.

Brigadoon will be paying tribute to the Italian director Umberto Lenzi –who passed away last October– and who received the Nosferatu Award in 2008. Among the films that can be seen are Ironmaster (1983), A Quiet Place to Kill (1970) and City of the Walking Dead (1980). This year the Nosferatu Award, as already announced, goes to German actress Helga Liné, who will be in Sitges presenting Terror (1963), by Alberto de Martino, and a special screening of Horror Rises from the Tomb (Carlos Aured, 1972).

This year, the Sitges Zombie Walk will take place the first Saturday of the Festival, which will be October 6th, and will once again be a shout out for zombies from all over to walk the town’s streets.

Sitges Industry Hub

For the second year in a row, the Festival will be welcoming the Sitges Industry Area thanks to the support of the International Markets Area of the Catalan Institute for Cultural Companies (ICEC) and Catalan Films & TV. It is a venue to welcome and promote activities directed at the professional audiovisual sector, and a meeting point for the professionals attending the film competition. Among its activities, there will be round tables, presentations, master classes and programs to promote other disciplines with a tradition in fantastic genre (literature, videogames...).

The Festival is hosting the fourth edition of the Sitges Pitchbox, the international pitching event organized along with the online platform Filmarket Hub. The call, which is aimed at horror, science fiction or fantasy feature films in the developmental stage, will remain open until August 29th. Accepting the baton from last year’s Guillermo del Toro, this year the actor and producer Ron Perlman will be opening the session.

The Blood Red Carpet, an initiative focused on the international promotion of acting talent in national and Latin American audiovisual production, also reaches its fourth edition. The program will present three new actors, three new actresses and three new directors selected for their promising career. Laia Costa, Alejo Sauras, Miki Esparbé or Bruna Cusí are just a few of the actors and actresses who have participated in previous editions.

The Sitges Taboo'ks program is presented as an umbrella that brings together different actions between literature and cinema. At the 2018 edition four different pieces will be presented that are eligible for being adapted to film and a project that is already in the process of being adapted. Joining this second call is the prize-giving of the UPC’s science fiction award, the presentation of a case study by Planeta, and the participation of a group of rights purchasers that is the result of collaboration with the Liber International Book Fair.

Last term, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) premiered the master degree Fantastic Cinema and Contemporary Fiction, in collaboration with the Sitges Festival. After the success of this first edition, enrolment is now open for the second edition, which will begin in October.

Official Book

At its 51st edition, Sitges is dedicating its official book to the Italian director Michele Soavi, the first essay in Spanish about this maestro, a non-conforming and always innovative filmmaker. Published by the Hermenaute Publishing House and under the title Michele Soavi. Cineasta de lo macabre (Michele Soavi. Filmmaker of the Macabre), the publication reviews the career of one of the most influential filmmakers in recent Italian horror movies starting with his beginnings and an assistant and apprentice to Dario Argento.

The book, created by Gerard Casau, Manlio Gomarasca, Mike Hostench, Diego López, Lluís Rueda and Ángel Sala –with a preface by Luigi Cozzi– includes a study of his most emblematic films (Aquarius, The Devil’s Daughter, The Church Cemetery Man, etc.) and it stresses his least known period as a filmmaker on the fringes of fantasy: police thrillers and melodramas nourish his previous phase as a television director. For many, Soavi is the last great talent in Italian film, bringing together the virtues of masters like Mario Bava, Sergio Martino, Umberto Lenzi, Antonio Margheriti or Lucio Fulci.

Passes, packs and marathons on sale

Starting today, July 19th, at 12:30, passes, packs and marathons for Sitges 2018 go on sale and are available via the Festival website.

Tickets for the John Carpenter concert on Saturday October 13th can also be purchased. Seating is limited and Festival credentials will not be valid to enter.

The Festival will active its sales via crypto-currency in September with the Slate Entertainment Group’s (SEG) blockchain based digital ticketing platform, Slatix. This initiative is groundbreaking within the industry and has been made possible thanks to the association established with the SEG, which is also the promoter of the new Binge platform, with audiovisual and cinematic fiction content, and also using blockchain technology for the first time.

Support for the 51st Sitges Film Festival

The Festival is grateful for the commitment of all the collaborating institutions and companies: Moritz and Slate Entertainment Group (main sponsors), Obra Social “la Caixa”, Domènech.Vidal i Mistinguett (sponsors), Meliá Sitges (sponsor and official headquarters), Movistar+ (multimedia partner), Deluxe (collaborator), La Vanguardia (official newspaper), TV3 (official TV), and Motor Munich, official BMW dealership (official vehicle).

Sitges 2018 is organized thanks to the participation of the Sitges Town Hall and the Catalonian Generalitat’s Department of Culture’s Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals (Catalan Institute of Cultural Enterprises) and is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports’ Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts), the Barcelona Diputació (City Council) and the Carnet Jove - Departament de Benestar i Família (Department of Welfare and Family).