The Ugly Stepsister, body horror retelling of Cinderella, wins Sitges' Festival Best Feature Film Award

A comedy-body-horror movie retelling of Cinderella has won the Best Feature Film Award at the 2025 Sitges Fantastic and Terror Film Festival. The Ugly Stepsister, the directorial debut of Norwegian Emilie Blichfeldt, has taken the most sought-after award.

The movie follows Elvira, who has to compete against her beautiful stepsister. Both live in a fairy tale where beauty is the leading business, so Elvira will try to do whatever she can to be noticed by the prince.

The Ugly Stepsister premiered in cinemas this week. Its cast includes Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Ane Dahl Torp, Flo Fagerli, and Isac Calmroth.

Filmmaker and jury member Hernan Findling highlighted that all 34 of the 34 movies competing at the official section "were very good films." But he said the jury was "quite quick in realizing that The Ugly Stepsister is a great movie," during a press conference on Saturday.

He said that around six movies had very high marks, which is why the jury decided to share the different awards across many movies. "There was a lot of good debate as there were very good movies this year," he said.

Mary Harron, also a filmmaker and a member of this year's jury, said that they valued the screenplay's originality or the design, among many other things.

"It is a very original movie that takes place in a new universe and retells a very traditional story from a new point of view," Mary Harron said.

The director of the Sitges Film Festival Foundation, Mònica Garcia, said that this is the fourth time a woman has won the Best Feature Film Award in 58 editions.

Meanwhile, South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook won the Best Director award for his latest movie, 'No Other Choice.'

The film is an adaptation of Donald E. Westlake's novel The Ax. The plot revolves around a man who has lost his job and plans to get a new one by getting rid of his competitors.

Sitges' special jury award has been ex aequo, meaning there have been two winners: The Furious by Kenji Tanigaki, and Obsession by Curry Barker. The latter was also awarded the Carnet Jove Best Feature Film Award and the Grand People's Choice Award for Best Feature Film.

The winners for Best Actress and Best Actor had been Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You and the entire cast of The Plague, respectively.

The Thai-Teochew-Hainanese Filmmaker based in Bangkok, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, won the award for Best Screenplay for A Useful Ghost. While Diego Tenorio took home the Best Cinematography Award for his work at the Catalan-coproduction 'La virgen de la tosquera.'