Sitges opens 59th horror and fantasy festival with 'Found Alive'

The 59th Sitges Film Festival opened Thursday night with a gala tribute to Julio Fernandez and the premiere of Carlota Perea's thriller 'Found Alive.'

Monica Garcia, director of the Sitges Festival Foundation, called it a "historical edition" because of the guests visiting the festival and the opening film.

"It is a year in which fantasy cinema set box-office trends, and a year featuring highly anticipated guests like Peter Jackson," Garcia said.

Garcia also wished to pay tribute to "a friend of the festival," Julio Fernández, founder of the Filmax group and its president until 2010, who died last year

The festival director noted that Fernández was "a visionary and someone who dedicated himself to the genre with a professional, industry-oriented approach, yet also with passion and love for the filmmakers and for a genre that wasn't widely championed back then, as it is now."

Before the opening film, a video dedicated to Fernández was screened, and his two daughters, Laura and Sandra Fernández, took the stage. 

Then came 'Found Alive,' Pereda's return to genre cinema after ''Piggy' and 'The Hermitage,' both of which were presented at Sitges. The psychological thriller follows Reeve LeClaire, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, a young woman still haunted by a kidnapping she endured as a teenager. 

In an interview with the Catalan News Agency (ACN), Pereda said thrillers involving "psycho-killers" usually focus on the killer, whereas here, "I wanted to flip the trope and do the opposite." 

The film, co-produced by Nostromo Pictures, will compete in the Official Fantastic Section and is based on the novel 'The Edge of Normal' by Carla Norton.

Awards

The festival's guest list is led by the stars receiving the Grand Honorary Prize: Peter Jackson, director of 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' trilogies, and actors Danny DeVito, Amy Irving, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. 

Actresses Meiko Kaji and Adrienne Barbeau will be honored in the WomanInFan award category, and actress Bárbara Rey will receive the Nosferatu Award. 

Alejandro Amenábar will receive the Méliès Career Award on the 30th anniversary of 'Thesis.' Robert Eggers, Yuen Woo-ping, Takashi Shimizu, Bob Murawski and Mark L. Lester will be recognized with the Time Machine Award.

Other guests include director Nicolas Winding Refn, who will present his latest film, 'Her Private Hell'; Pino Donaggio, composer of the score for 'Carrie,' and actor Michael Ironside, who played "some of cinema's greatest iconic villains of the 70s, 80s and 90s."

The festival will close with 'Wicker,' directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson and starring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård.