Today, Thursday the 8th of October 2020, starts the 53rd Sitges Film Festival, for many considered the best horror, fantasy, and science-fiction festival in the world. And, for the first time since the foundation of the magazine, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ganiveta is not able to attend the festival to do our already classic event covering.
The opening title for this year’s festival is the Spanish war and horror movie Malnazidos (2020), an attractive mix of the dramatic events of the Spanish Civil War (from 1936 to 1939) with the horror and supernatural zombies set up in the style of Dead Snow (2009). The movie has been directed by Javier Ruiz Caldera, known for comedy-oriented films like Spanish Movie (2009), Spy Time (2015) (Anacleto: Agente Secreto in its original Spanish language), and Super Lopez (2018), in a tandem with his frequent collaborator and editor Alberto de Toro.
Months after bloody combats leave behind thousands of dead in the trenches. Jan Lozano, Captain of the Fifth Brigade has fallen prisoner by an opponent’s platoon along with a young driver while carrying out a mission that has been entrusted to him. The possibility of dying executed will soon be overtaken when a new unknown enemy arises. Both rival sides must unite and set their mutual hate aside in order to survive.
The movie is based on the novel “Noche de Difuntos del 38” by Manuel Martín Ferreras, and Jaime Marques (Intruders (2011)) and Cristian Conti (Wild District (2018– ) TV series) have been in charge of the screenplay. Aura Garrido, Álvaro Cervantes, María Botto, Luis Callejo, Miki Esparbé, Ken Appledorn, Sergio Torrico, Frank Feys, Manuel Morón, Jesús Carroza, and Francisco Reyes form the main cast.
Malnazidos (2020) is having its world premiere at the Sitges Film Festival, and it won’t be released in theaters until January 2021.
As every year, the Official Competition section of the 53rd Sitges Film Festival hosts the screenings of some of the most interesting international productions in the horror, fantasy, and science-fiction genre of the year. The line-up includes titles like Archenemy (2020), being its world premiere, from Adam Egypt Mortimer, the director of Daniel Isn’t Real (2019), Gavin Rothery’s Artificial Intelligence science-fiction thriller Archive (2020), Juanma Bajo Ulloa’s experimental drama Baby (2020), Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott’s home invasion action-horror Becky (2020), Quentin Dupieux’s amazing gigantic fly weird comedy Mandibules (2020), Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan (2016) sequel Peninsula (2020), Brandon Cronenberg’s latest nightmare science-fiction and horror film Possessor Uncut (2020), Amy Seimetz’s horrifying epiphany film She Dies Tomorrow (2020), Natalie Erika James’s debut film and one of the best horror titles of the year Relic (2020), Egor Abramenko’s Russian take of the Alien (1979) story Sputnik (2020), and one of the most promising directorial debuts of the year, Julius Berg’s The Owners (2020).
And, one of the fan’s favorite sections of the festival, Midnight X-Treme, comes this year also loaded with liters of blood, crazy stories, and a bunch of amazing titles. Debutant Karl Holt’s horror-comedy Benny Loves You (2019), Adam Leader and Richard Oakes’ nightmarish Christmas Eve Hosts (2020), Gabriel Carrer and Reese Eveneshen’s torture horror-thriller For The Sake Of The Vicious (2020), Steven Kostanski’s ancient alien overlord horror fantasy Psycho Goreman (2020), Marc Fehse’s crazy Nazi war machine flick Sky Sharks (2020), Elza Kephart’s killer jeans Slaxx (2020), Andrew Thomas Hunt’s gory girl-gladiator Spare Parts (2020), Kimo Stamboel’s Indonesian black magic nightmare The Queen of Black Magic (2019) (aka Ratu Ilmu Hitam in original Indonesian language), and Lars Damoiseaux’s zombified plastic surgery horror-comedy Yummy (2019) are on the menu.
We wish the best to the Sitges Film Festival in this strange year, hoping the horrors stay on the silver screen and everybody makes it safely back home. Precaution, cotton (this time not rubber or skin) face masks, and lots of disinfectant gel to enjoy of the best genre film festival in the world.
