All good things have to come to an end. As exhausting as astonishing, a new Sitges Film Festival has passed. The festival had finished for me merely a few hours ago, and it already feels like it’s been days, I already miss it. But, let’s keep the good things, a lot of good films were seen, some very good surprises, some few disappointments, but the satisfaction of having lived what is the best horror, science-fiction and fantasy film festival in Europe and probably of the entire world.
Now it’s the time to review what the festival brought. In my own personal level, the best 3 movies seen at Sitges this year were Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019), Gaspar Noé’s Lux Æterna (2019), and Rob Zombie’s 3 from Hell (2019), with special mentions to Damien LeVeck’s The Cleansing Hour (2019), Won-Tae Lee’s The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil (2019), and Renny Harlin’s Bodies at Rest (2019). But personal opinions are like butts, each one of us has our own. So let’s summarize what the official awards winnings have to offer.
The undisputed winner of the 2019 Sitges Film Festival is El Hoyo (called The Platform as the international title) (2019), a dark futuristic tale where prisoners are housed in vertically stacked cells watch hungrily as food descends from above, feeding the upper tiers, but leaving those below ravenous and radicalized. The movie is the debut feature film of Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia and won Best Feature Film at the Audience Award section, Best Visual Effects, Citizen Kane Award for Best Directorial Revelation and Best Motion Picture in the Official Fantàstic Competition. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles got the Best Direction award for Bacurau (2019), and the Best Screenplay award was achieved by Mirrah Foulkes for Judy & Punch (2019). Imogen Poots won Best Actress for Vivarium (2019) and Miles Robbins won Best Actor for Daniel Isn’t Real (2019).
In the different sections of the festival, it is to outstand Adoration (2019) by Fabrice du Welz winning the Special Jury Prize, Dogs Don’t Wear Pants (2019) by J-P Valkeapäa winning Best Feature Film in Noves Visions, Extra Ordinary (2019) by Aike Ahern and Enda Loughman winning Audience Award Best Motion Picture in Panorama Fantàstic, The Tag-Along: The Devil Fish (2018) by David Chuang winning Audience Award Best Motion Picture in Midnight X-treme, The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil (2019) by Lee Won-Tae winning Audience Award Best Motion Picture in Focus Àsia, and Breve Historia del Planeta Verde (aka Brief Story from the Green Planet) (2019) by Santiago Loza winning Blood Window Best Film.
You can check the full list of prize winners here (https://sitgesfilmfestival.com/eng/festival/palmares).
If you miss any of the daily articles following Sitges Film Festival 2019 you can read them here:
- Day 1: THE PARTY STARTS NOW
- Day 2: From “Verotika” to the “Suicide Tourist”
- Day 3: The zombies are taking over
- Day 4: “The Lighthouse”, the darkest spot on the horizon
- Day 5: Gaspar Noé hypnotizes us all again
- Day 6: Exhibitions and Sitges Experience
- Day 7: “Synchronic” saves the day
- Day 8: Who is getting their honorific awards this year?
- Day 9: The supernatural takes possession in “The Cleansing Hour” and “Color Out of Space”
And here’s the list of full movie reviews from the 52nd edition of the Sitges Film Festival:
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- 3 From Hell (2019)
- Verotika (2019)
- Bloodline (2018)
- Riot Girls (2019)
- In The Tall Grass (2019)
- The Lighthouse (2019)
- Ready or Not (2019)
- Bodies at Rest (2019)
- Lux Æterna (2019)
- O Beautiful Night (2019)
- The Furies (2019)
- Depraved (2019)
- El Camino A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)
- Porno (2019)
- Greener Grass (2019)
- Amigo (2019)
