Despite pulling out all the stops for last year’s massive 50th anniversary celebration, the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival returned with an even bigger 51st edition in 2018, as the Catalonian region was inundated with stars, genre cinema addicts and a truly fantastic lineup over eleven (mostly) sunny days in early October.
World cinema luminaries such as Tilda SWINTON and Nicholas CAGE took center stage in the sweeping Auditori theater under the Melia Hotel, ground zero for a festival that invades every corner of an idyllic resort town just a 30-minute drive south of Barcelona on the breezy Catalonian coast. Yet, as ever, despite its Tinseltown razzle and dazzle and the many powerhouse names from European cinema that attend each year, Sitges has always welcomed a large contingent of Korean films with open arms.
True to form, Sitges 2018 featured 18 South Korean films spread across its lineup, one of which even had the good fortune to bring home an award. Several Korean filmmakers were also lucky enough to visit, indulging in the town’s caches of cava, its abundant seafood and its long, sandy beaches.
One of Korean cinema’s most ardent fans, Mike HOSTENCH, the vice director of the Sitges film festival, explained that “the Panorama award for
Monstrum proves that Korean films had another successful Sitges tour. From big players like
LEE Chang-dong's
BURNING and
LEE Hae-young's
Believer, to thrilling indie entries like
KIM Ui-seok's
After My Death, Korean film once again found a solid platform for publicity and distribution in Sitges."
The festival’s main event, the Official Fantastic Competition, comprised a trio of works hailing from two very different corners of the Korean film industry. Not normally a name associated with the Fantastic Film Festival circuit,
LEE Chang-dong had a film invited to Sitges for the first time with
BURNING, his critically acclaimed MURAKAMI Haruki short story adaptation that bowed in competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Vulcan Award for the Technical Artist.
Crowd-pleaser
THE OUTLAWS, a gritty action crime drama with
Don LEE (aka
MA Dong-seok) in the lead, was last year’s big Chuseok hit in Korea with over seven million viewers recorded. The other Korean films in Cannes this year,
The Spy Gone North is a rich 1990s-set espionage yarn featuring
HWANG Jung-min as the real-life agent ‘Black Venus’, who went undercover in the North to gain intel on the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear development plans.
Switching to the indie realm, the Noves Visions (New Visions) lineup featured both
KIM Ui-seok’s
After My Death and
KIM Ki-duk’s
Human, Space, Time and Human.
After My Death debuted at the
Busan International Film Festival last year, where it earned the New Currents award. The high school suicide drama is the debut of director
KIM Ui-seok. Veteran indie filmmaker
KIM Ki-duk, who has run afoul of the public this year following allegations of misconduct on his film sets, premiered his latest film, the fantasy-tinged gritty arthouse drama
Human, Space, Time and Human, at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year.
Of course, no genre film festival would be complete without its fair share of horror and Korea pulled its weight with this year’s surprise hit found footage horror
GONJIAM: Haunted Asylum screening in the Midnight X-Treme lineup. Director
JUNG Bum-shik was also in town to join the festivities.
Meanwhile, a trio of Korean shorts screened in the VR 360 section in the Slatix Sitges Cocoon. Sponsored by Slatix, a digital blockchain-powered ticketing system from the Slate Entertainment Group (SEG), the lineup included PARK Hyun-cheol’s
Ghost, HONG Jae-gyun’s
Horomaru and
LEE Hyun-suk’s
VOLT: CHAIN CITY (2017).
Outside of the program and the Korean film industry guests, which included several representatives from the
Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), Sitges also stocked up on Korean film-related merchandise, with the stands by the Saint Sebastian Beach offering up a variety of Korean film t-shirts, Blu-rays and more.