Sitges 2021: Mamoru Hosoda, Carlos Saura and Belén Rueda This Year's Grand Honorary Award Winners

Mamoru Hosoda, Carlos Saura and Belén Rueda, Sitges 2021 Grand

Honorary Award Winners

 

The Festival announces the complete list of award winners at its 54th edition

 

Directors Mamoru Hosoda and Carlos Saura, and actress Belén Rueda, will receive the Grand Honorary Award at the 54th Sitges - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia. The Time Machine Awards will go to director Neill Blomkamp , actress Alice Krige and screenwriter Nick Antosca, while music score composer Roque Baños will be honored with the Honorary María and actor Emilio Gutiérrez Caba will receive this year's Nosferatu Award. Meanwhile, filmmaker Lucile Hadzihalilovic will receive the Career Award presented by the Méliès International Festivals  Federation.

 

SITGES 2021 GRAND HONORARY AWARD

 

Considered one of the leading innovators of animated films, Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda launched his career at Toei Animation, where he learned his trade as an animator. From 2005 to 2011, thanks to his work at Madhouse Studio he released groundbreaking and visionary works including The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) and Summer Wars (2009). In 2011 he created his own company, Studio Chizu, and shaped his most daring and personal works, Wolf Children (2012), The Boy and the Beast (2015), Mirai (2018) and the recent Belle:The Dragon and the Freckled Princess (2021).

 

Belén Rueda became one of the most celebrated scream queens in Spanish fantastic films, after a highly successful first stage in her career connected to television. Her performance in The Orphanage (2007) garnered her a nomination for Best Actress at the Goya Awards, a category she would end up winning at the Fantasporto festival. Years later, she would return in even more well-loved genre movies including the neo-noir Julia's Eyes (2010), twisted thrillers such as The Body (2012) and Perfect Strangers (2017), and even sci-fi in Órbita 9 (2017).

 

Director, screenwriter and photographer active since 1956, Carlos Saura made a name for himself internationally with The Hunt (1966), a devastating and courageous allegory of Francoist Spain that won the Award for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival. Afterwards came indisputable classics in Spanish moviemaking such as Anna and the Wolves (1973), Cría Cuervos (1976), Mama Turns 100 (1979) and Deprisa, Deprisa (1981), films with an irresistible, uncompromising and free-thinking personality. His collaborations with Vitorio Storaro, Tango (1998) or Goya in Bordeaux (1999), are full of fantastique-inspired images. His short film Goya 3 de mayo (2021) will be presented at the Festival.

 

SITGES 2021 TIME MACHINE AWARD

 

With a background in the field of 3D animation, visual effects and advertising, Neill Blomkamp made his big leap to film with District 9 (2009), a science fiction feature set in his native Johannesburg that garnered four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. After continuing in genre with the dystopias Elysium (2013) and Chappie (2015), in 2017 he created Oats Studios, an independent production company specializing in experimental fantastic and horror short films. At Sitges 2021 he will present his latest film, Demonic (2021).

 

In 1981, the same year of her discovery with Chariots of Fire, Alice Krige became a familiar face in fantastic and horror movies when she co-starred in Ghost Story, one of the greatest ghost stories of the eighties. In subsequent years, and after joining the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, she returned to genre with Sleepwalkers (1992), gave life to the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and excelled as the witch Holda in Gretel & Hansel (2020). She will be starring in the upcoming reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and will be presenting She Will at Sitges 2021.

 

Nick Antosca began his career as a horror novel writer, and after winning the Shirley Jackson Award in 2009 for Midnight Picnic, he became a screenwriter for television series such as Teen Wolf and Hannibal. In 2016, he made the big leap as a showrunner of Channel Zero, a four-season miniseries where he redefined the visual imaginary of modern horror starting from famous creepypastas. In 2021, he debuted on Netflix with Brand New Cherry Flavor, one of the year's major TV sensations, and in Sitges he is presenting a film produced by Guillermo del Toro, Antlers, and the Chucky series.

 

SITGES 2021 HONORARY MARIA AWARD

 

Roque Baños, a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Boston's Berklee College of Music with majors in film scoring and jazz performance, is one of the most awarded and respected film score composers of his generation. He has been active since 1997, has won three Goya Awards and has a special affinity for the fantastic and horror genres. He is the go-to musician for genre figures such as Álex de la Iglesia and Fede Álvarez. He has also worked with Jaume Balagueró, Alejandro Amenábar, Terry Gilliam and Spike Lee.

 

SITGES 2021 NOSFERATU AWARD

 

Born in Valladolid into a family of actors, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba scored his first hit in 1963 starring in a theatrical adaptation of Peter Pan. His first foray into horror is legendary: the beyond the grave romance with Dyanik Zurakowska in The Sweet Sound of Death (1965). Between 1966 and 1967 he appeared in three iconic Historias para no dormir by Chicho Ibáñez Serrador: El cuervo, La sonrisa and La espera. Subsequently, his love affair with genre continued in cult films such as Estigma (1980), Viaje al más allá (1980) and Memorias del ángel caído (1997). In 2001 he received the Goya Award for Best Supporting Actor in Common Wealth. He is still active after more than six decades in the profession.

 

2021 MÉLIÈS CAREER AWARD

 

Lucile Hadzihalilovic will receive the Career Award at Sitges 2021, presented by the Méliès International Festivals Federation. After graduating from the Institut Des Hautes Études Cinématographiques in Paris, she embarked on her career as a director, writer, editor and actress in both feature and short films. In 2004, she made her feature debut with Innocence, a San Sebastian award-winner and one of the most suggestive fantastique films of its time. Her second endeavor, Evolution (2015), was in charge of closing the Noves Visions section in Sitges, a film that confirmed her as one of the most fascinating and personal voices in European  fantastic genre. This year she will present Earwig (2021) at the film competition.