PRESENCE To Open Sitges 2024; Alexandre Aja's NEVER LET GO To Close

This was one of the hardest festival news articles I've had to write. Why? Because I can't attend Sitges this year, and their line-up, always great, is even more stellar than usual. Each paragraph brough tears to my eyes, thinking of all the wonderful films I can't see, at the best genre fest in Europe. Body horror, slashers, men lost in space, aliens, samurai and swords, wild robots and more. Existential crises, leaps of faith, love and hate, revenge, satisfaction. Live action, animation short films, long films, indie films and studio blockbusters - if there is a theme you prefer, a monster you crave, an idea you're never thought of but want to explore, there's something for you at Sitges.

So get yourself a cafe con leche, get comfortably seated, and have a perusal over all the goodies to be seen next month, in our favourite sunny corner of Europe. Below is excerpted from a press release.

Sitges2024 Completes its Constellation of the World's Best Fantastic Genre

The latest creations from Steven Soderbergh, Coralie Fargeat, Alexandre Aja, Asif Kapadia, Natalia Erika James, Adam Elliot, Bertrand Mandico, Pupi Avati and many more will be enjoyed by audiences in our theaters. With less than a month to go until the kick off of the SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, we are sure that you're on the edge of your seat. So today, at last, the wait is over. And we offer you a long list of names and titles, irresistible for any genre fan, among which you will find the most long-awaited horror, sci-fi and fantastic films of the year.

Two New Distinguished Award Winners
 
Actor Geoffrey Rush, best known as Captain Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, will receive our Grand Honorary Prize this year. Winner of an Academy Award for Best Actor for Shine and two BAFTAs for Best Supporting Actor for The King's Speech and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, this Australian actor has also embraced genre in films that include Gods of Egypt, Mystery Men and House on Haunted Hill (1999). The actor will be visiting the Festival, where his latest film, The Rule of Jenny Pen, will also be screened as part of the Official In Competition Selection.

Meanwhile, director Alexandre Aja will be receiving the Time Machine Award this year. This French filmmaker has been exploring every imaginable corner of horror for more than two decades, from slashers in his acclaimed remake of The Hills Have Eyes to the animalistic horror in Crawl or Piranha 3D. This year Aja will return to Sitges, where his controversial High Tension garnered three awards in 2004, to receive this accolade and, while he's at it, to present his latest film: Never Let Go, which will be in charge of bringing the Festival to a close. 
 
The awards presented to Geoffrey Rush and Alexandre Aja are in addition to those already announced in July: Mike Flanagan, Nick Frost, Heather Lagenkamp, Ovidio G. Assonitis, Christophe Gans, Fred Dekker and Fabio Testi. 

Announcing the Opening and Closing  Films

The opening film will be Presence, the new film from Palme d'Or and Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh. This versatile American director, the man behind films that include Ocean's Eleven, Contagion, Sex, Lies and Videotape, Traffic and Solaris (among many others), will be presenting his new feature film at the Festival, an intriguing story about a family being haunted by a mysterious presence. Following its success at this year's Sundance and Toronto Festivals, Presence will be presented in Sitges with the presence (pun intended!) of its director.
 
Meanwhile, and although we already just gave you a little spoiler, we can announce Never Let Go as the closing film. 
 
New Titles in the Official Selection
 
Asif Kapadia, director of Senna, Amy, or Diego Maradona, puts aside his passion for biopics to once again embrace his origins in the fantastic genre. And he does it with 2073, a feature film inspired by Chris Marker's La Jetée that moves between science fiction and documentary. Additionally, the filmmaker who won us over in 2019 with his I Lost My Body revisits us, this time with Meanwhile on Earth. Jérémy Clapin takes the plunge into live-action filmmaking with this tale of extraterrestrials that generated very good reactions at this year's Berlin film festival. And landing directly from Venice are the Quay Brothers, monoliths of experimental animation, who will be presenting the obscure Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, a stop-motion phantasmagoria that all fans of Phill Tippet will be crazy about.


Activists, disappearances and a strange planet. Actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, a Festival regular, stars in Planet B by French filmmaker Aude-Lea Rapin. Aislinn Clarke will be taking the leap from Midnight X-Treme, where she surprised audiences in 2018 with her The Devil's Doorway, to the Official Selection. This time she treats us to the haunting Fréwaka, a reinterpretation of Irish folklore that shook up the Locarno festival. J.T. Mollner, the man behind Outlaws and Angels, leaves the cowboys behind to invite us to a romantic night with a serial killer in Strange Darling. Less romantic will be the screening of Basileia, the feature debut of Italian filmmaker Isabella Torre, a mysterious archeological expedition with Lovecraftian echoes.

Following his participation in the Festival in 2021 with Coming Home in the Dark, New Zealander James Ashcroft will open the doors to The Rule of Jenny Pen, a geriatric thriller with elderly murderers starring honoree Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow. From Asia, Li Yang visits us with his Escape from the 21st Century, an amusing tale of time travel and sneezes. This Chinese filmmaker's action filmmaking returns to our screens after surprising us in 2012 with his debut feature, Lee's Adventure. And from Brazil arrives an interesting double bill. On the one hand, Marco Dutra returns to the Official Selection, after doing so with his Good Manners in 2011, with the crude depiction of two workers who collect roadkill in Bury Your Dead. And on the other, Davi Pretto, director of the widely acclaimed Castanha and Rifle, will establish a dialogue between supernatural and western in his new Continent.
 
Norwegian Tallulah Hazekamp Schwab will make her first foray into genre filmmaking with Mr. K, a claustrophobic thriller about a hotel with Overlook vibes. And we'll need to strap on our masks once again, as Thibault Emin brings us the feature-length adaptation of his short Else, where he unleashes a strange, formless pandemic. Finally, actress Élise Otzenberger will make her directorial debut with Par amour, a family's sci-fi odyssey by the sea. 

A Collection of Very Special Screenings
 
The Festival's new Official Section, Sitges Collection, kicks off with the previously announced The Substance by Coralie Fargeat. The latest release from the director of Revenge, winner of the award for Best Director (and Best New Director!) at Sitges 2017, caused genuine mass hysteria at the past edition of the Cannes Festival. Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, the film explores the archetype of the doppelganger from the perspective of the Z movie and the celebrity universe.

The legendary Dakota Building reopens its doors in Apartment 7A, the long-awaited prequel to Rosemary's Baby. In the wake of Relic' s applauded participation at the Festival's pandemic edition, director Natalie Erika James takes the reins of this cursed prologue that poses the question, hand in hand with actresses Julia Garner and Dianne Wiest, of what happened before Rosemary moved to New York. Fresh from the Venice Festival, L'orto Americano, the new film from Italian maestro Pupi Avati, starring Filippo Scotti and Rita Tushingham, lands in Sitges. On this occasion, the man responsible for key giallo works like The House with Laughing Windows and also a Lamberto Bava collaborator presents the monochromatic story of a young psychopath with literary ambitions.
 
We wouldn't be able to understand a Sitges Film Festival without him: Nicolas Cage will be back on our screens this year with Benjamin Brewer's Arcadian. This acclaimed music video director continues his cinematic journey in this father-son survival film that also features the presence of young Jaeden Martell, always loyal to horror movies. Also taking on the role of a father is Elijah Wood, another Festival friend, in Ant Timpson's Bookworm. The filmmaker repeats with Wood after the success of Come to Daddy in Sitges, this time in a family adventure threatened by a mythological beast.
 
Asian cinema, naturally, will also be present in this new section. After visiting Sitges in 2017 with his hilarious Your Spiritual Temple Sucks, Taiwanese filmmaker John Hsu will be presenting his new movie Dead Talents Society, a paranormal comedy with a creepypasta soul about ghosts that are eager to become urban legends. On the flipside of the coin will be Kim Dong-Chul's Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning, an animated nightmare that combines 2D and 3D animation. This adaptation of one of the most popular Korean webtoons in recent years premiered at the past edition of the Annecy Film Festival.

Continuing with animation, The Wild Robot, the latest project from American maestro Chris Sanders, will be shipwrecked on the shores of Sitges. The man behind films like Lilo & Stitch or How to Train Your Dragon delivers a robotic odyssey dubbed by a deluxe cast, including Pedro Pascal, Lupita Nyong'o and Mark Hamill. Animated adventures are the order of the day, because Wojtek Wawszczyk' s Diplodocus will also have its slot in this section. The Polish filmmaker, in charge of the visual effects for I Robot, makes his feature film debut with this colorful production.
 
Beyond Sitges Collection, we will also be welcoming some of the Festival's now legendary special screenings, starting with the eagerly awaited Salem's Lot, the latest big screen adaptation of Stephen King's iconic story. Gary Dauberman, director of Annabelle Comes Home and screenwriter for Andy Muschietti's It, will present this new descent into hell of novelist Ben Mears, played this time by Lewis Pullman. Filmmaking duo Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy are back on the pedal in House of Spoils. Following Blow the Man Down, these two Americans choreograph a nightmare in the kitchen starring Ariana DeBose, Arian Moayed and Barbie Ferreira.
 
Another couple that couldn't fail to miss the event is the one consisting of Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, who in The Soul Eater will immerse us in the murky atmosphere of a police investigation aiming to solve a chilling series of disappearances of young children in a secluded village. Destry Allyn Spielberg, daughter of the legendary American director, debuts in feature length with Please Don't Feed the Children, accompanied by actor Giancarlo Esposito. Finally, we welcome back another of Sitges' usual suspects, as Hidenori Inoue once again brings us the theatrical spirit of kabuki with Rose & Samurai 2: Return of the Pirate Queen.

Asia Conquers Òrbita Again 
 
Once again this year, it has been confirmed that the fringes of genre continue to be led by Asian filmmakers; and our Òrbita section continues to bear witness to this. Arriving from Hong Kong is Felix Chong's The Goldfinger, an action thriller with an eighties spirit helmed by a deluxe cast, featuring Tony Leung and Andy Lau. Just like these actors, another person who has collaborated with Wong Kar-wai is the Chinese director Xu Haofeng. Following the success of The Final Master, in 100 Yards he narrates the intense duel for the leadership of a wushu academy.
 
South Korea gifts us with The Roundup: Punishment by Heo Myeong Haeng, director of Badland Hunters, where the longtime legendary actor Ma Dong-seok completes the fourth part of this successful detective action franchise. Also South Korean and belonging to the crime genre is the new film by Ryoo Seung-wan, the man behind Escape from Mogadishu. In I, The Executioner, a professor's murder raises doubts as to the existence of a serial killer. Meanwhile, Lee Jong-pil will leave us breathless with Escape, where a North Korean sergeant will try to hunt down a defector. Closing the Asian lineup are, first, from Hong Kong, Kim-Wai Yuen with The Moon Thieves, a sophisticated intrigue revolving around a scheme to steal antique watches, and then Japan's Nobuhiro Yamashita, who this year is presenting a double bill at the Festival with his Ghost Cat Anzu, and his harrowing thriller that only requires two actors, Confession.
 
This edition of Òrbita also welcomes old Festival friends. Brothers Marco and Antonio Manetti will continue adapting Angela and Luciana Giussani's “fumetti” in Diabolik: Who Are You? Congolese filmmaker Jean Luc Herbulot returns after screening his Saloum in the Noves Visions section in 2021. This time he arrives with Zero up his sleeve, a suffocating feature film that raises the question of where the bombs attached to his protagonists' chests come from. Belgian Fabrice Du Welz also knows Sitges pretty well, given that some of his previous works, like Adoration or Alleluia, have already made a huge impact on our screens. A policeman who prefers to take the law into his own hands will be his new pretext for returning to visit us with Maldoror, one of the big shockers at the recent Venice Film Festival.
 
Rounding off the Òrbita section will be the eagerly awaited Beating Hearts, a violent romance that was screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Gilles Lellouche, Quentin Dupieux's regular actor, is in charge of directing his regular cast (Adèle Exarchopoulos, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi) in a kitsch portrait of a rather hopeless relationship.

Panorama, a Constellation of Current Horror
 
The Panorama section offers us the Spanish premieres of some of the horror movies that have been the most talked about over the last few months. Cristian Ponce, director of one of the major phenomenon at the 2021 edition, History of the Occult, returns to Sitges with A Mother's Embrace, a survival horror movie set in 1996. Mexico's Isaac Ezbán, a Festival regular, will also be present in this section with his new Párvulos: Hijos del apocalipsis, the story of three young boys who are hiding something very dark in their basement.   
 
In Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever, Denmark's Ole Bornedal will present a Nikolaj Coster-Waldau confronted with his past traumas, Ukraine's Pavlo Ostrikov will unveil a solitary space odyssey in U Are the Universe and American filmmaker Brandon Espy will depict a children's show host who kidnaps kids in Mr. Crocket, who could well be an African-American (and very over-the-top) version of the mythical Freddy Krueger. Meanwhile, Paul Evans Thomas choreographs a rural version of Brian De Palma's Impact with Within the Pines, Spider One imagines a nightmarish mother-eating monster in Little Bites, Mercedes Bryce Morgan builds a tantalizing labyrinth of sex, lies and survival in Bone Lake, and Tata Sidharta imagines a teenager with the ability to enter other people's dreams in Respati.
 
Latvia's Marcis Lacis will bring Touched by Eternity, an art-house vampire comedy, out of the coffin, Italy's Francesco Carnesecchi will go hunting in his dark Resvrgis and Japan's Jun'ichi Yasuda will go meta with the zany comedy A Samurai in Time. We finish the overview of Panorama with Push, by David Charbonier and Justin Powell, the historical horror of Thordur Palsson's The Damned, the search for a missing monster hunter in Kourtney Roy's Kryptic, the exploration of a gloomy building in Tenement by Sokyou Chea and Inrasothythep Neth, and the martial arts in the comatose universe of Kim-Wai Yuen's Inexternal. 

Noves Visions, New Perspectives
 
The Noves Visions section continues to be the ideal space to discover those tiny gems that may not be generating that much conversation just yet, but that will undoubtedly begin to do so. We kick things off by announcing a special screening where we can enjoy the 4K remastering and Director's Cut of the cult film The Fall directed by Tarsem Singh. In this dazzling extravaganza, winner of the award for Best Picture at Sitges 2007, the Indian filmmaker captures the nonconformist spirit of this section. The same can be said of French director Bertrand Mandico's cinema, who will be in charge of closing the section with his indescribable Dragon Dilatation. This diptych of film essays promises to turn the Festival upside down, just as it did at the Locarno festival. In Noves Visions we can also see the latest short film by Don Hertzfeldt, director of It's Such a Beautiful Day and World of Tomorrow, who returns with his existentialist minimalism in the musical odyssey ME. 
 
In competition we will find Sew Torn, by Freddy Macdonald, one of the most addictive thrillers of the season; Love Me by Sam and Andy Zuchero, a peculiar love story between a buoy and a satellite interpreted by Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun; Didier Koning's Heresy, a medieval horror tale that stormed the Rotterdam festival; Caroline Lindy's Your Monster, a portrait of a charming monster starring Melissa Barrera; and Simon Jaquemet's Electric Child, a dystopian Faustian pact with Artificial Intelligence. Also coming to the section will be The Killers, the Korean hitman anthology by Jong-kwan Kim, Deok Roh, Hang-jun Chang and Myung-Se Lee; The Hyperboreans, the esoteric Chilean oddity by Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León; Gazer, Ryan J. Sloan's dyschronometric paranoia; and Pepe, the incredible fable about Pablo Escobar's hippopotamuses by Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias. 
 
Rounding out the menu are the atypical time travels in Michael Felker's Things Will Be Different, the combat between some maverick teens and evil spirits in Spirit in the Blood by Carly May Borgstrom, the cultist horror in Body Odyssey by Grazia Tricarico, the surreal time travel in Yannis Veslemes' She Loved Blossoms More, the Mexican-style island tales in Edgar Nito's Fisherman's Tale, and the meta-cinematic nightmare in It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This by Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti. 

Animated Film Shines at Anima't
 
Even though animation is also present in many other corners of the Festival, Anima't continues to be its sanctuary for yet another year. Adam Elliot, director of the much applauded -and tearful- Mary and Max, once again opens the doors of his dark Claymation universe with his new film, Memoir of a Snail. On this occasion, one of the most important names in contemporary stop-motion tells the story of the relationship between a lonely girl fond of collecting and an eccentric old woman named Pinky. The complete opposite of Elliot's darkness will bring us the brilliant The Colors Within, the new film by Naoko Yamada. The woman behind Japanese anime gems like A Silent Voice tells the story of a synaesthetic student who can see other people as colors.
 
From China arrives The Umbrella Fairy, art director Jie Shen's directorial debut, a fairy tale capable of fusing Chinese folklore with Japanese animation. After imagining On the White Planet, South Korean animator Hur Bum-wook takes on Pig That Survived Foot-and-Mouth Disease, an ironic story about a pig who wants to be human and a human who wants to be an animal. Ricardo Curtis and Rodrigo Perez-Castro collaborate for the first time in the amusing Night of the Zoopocalypse, a 3D apocalypse caused by a meteorite that turns animals into slimy mutant zombies. Finally, Argentina's David Bisbano, director of A Mouse Tale, imagines a Borgian family odyssey in Dalia y el Libro Rojo, while Pakistan's Usman Riaz embarks on a feature-length film with his anti-war The Glassworker. We ring down the curtain with a special screening of Fox & Hare Save the Forest, where Dutch director Mascha Halberstad, director of the acclaimed Oink, tells the story of the animated odyssey of two best friends in search of a missing owl.    

Freaks, Fangs and Tributes to the Classics
 
This year, in this cabinet of masterpieces, you will be able to enjoy films including Tobe Hopper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a monolith among American slasher films that will be screened in a stunning 35mm copy. We also present the 4K remastering of Ishirō Honda's kaiju eiga classic Godzilla. In addition, we will pay tribute to a number of award winners from throughout the Festival, such as actress Heather Lagenkamp with a screening of Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, actor Fabio Testi with a screening of Sergio Sollima's Revolver, and filmmaker Fred Dekker with a screening of his Night of the Creeps. We close the section with the screening of the apocryphal sequel Alien 2: On Earth by Ciro Ippolito.
 
Additionally, and in keeping with the leitmotif of this year's edition, we dedicate a retrospective to the universe of freaks, starting with Freaks, of course, and The Unknown by Tod Browning and The Magician by Ingmar Bergman, as well as Santa Sangre by Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? by Ray Dennis Steckler and The Funhouse by Tobe Hopper, and ending with The Last Circus by Álex de la Iglesia and House of 1000 Corpses by Rob Zombie, the latter remastered in 4K.

Non-fiction Takes Shelter in Sitges Documental
 
Living in such a terrifying and surrealist current situation, it wouldn't make sense for the Festival to ignore non-fiction. That's why this year Sitges Documenta is back with a vengeance. We could never have Sitges without Dario Argento, so to the documentaries announced in July we add Deep Argento by Giancarlo Rolandi and Steve Della Casa, a personal journey through the life of the maestro of giallo, until now always relatively unknown. Rupert Russell presents The Last Sacrifice, a terrifying doc about the murder of Charles Walton, the event that inspired The Wicker Man and gave birth to folk horror. As if paganism weren't enough, Scott Cummings brings us Realm of Satan, an experimental portrait of the Church of Satan.
 
On the national scene, Víctor Matellano, a Festival regular, presents a new documentary on the legendary figure of Paul Naschy, one of the great names in Spanish horror movies. It is entitled Llámame Paul and will be part of Sitges Documenta. Another Spanish participant in Sitges Documenta will be Ishiro Honda: Memoirs of a Film Director by Jonathan Bellés, one of Spain's great kaiju eiga experts. In this case, he focuses on Ishiro Honda's career as a director, known for being the director of Godzilla (1954).

Spanish Seriality
 
The Sitges Film Festival continues with its commitment to series, both domestic and international. In this case, we can now announce the participation of Invisible, from Disney+, inspired by the best seller of the same name by Eloy Moreno and directed by Paco Caballero. In the series we experience a case of bullying through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy who suffers a terrible accident. While recovering, he reveals to his psychologist that he has a very special power: the power of invisibility. The series stars young actor Eric Seijo, along with Aura Garrido, Miki Esparbé, Diego Montejo, Liv Dobner, and Izan Fernández, among others. Another project being presented in Sitges is Hay algo en el bosque (There's Something in the Woods), an eight-episode Spanish series with echoes of the Evil Dead trilogy featuring a group of strangers who find themselves in some secluded cabins, where they discover that aliens, criminals and monsters are just a few of the dangers lurking in the woods. The series, which will later premiere on the horror channel DARK, is directed by Nicolás Amelio-Ortiz and Gastón Haag and features an ensemble cast that includes Iván Massagué, Angy Fernández, Zorion Eguileor, Alfonso Agra, Carmen Ruiz, Tomás Pozzi, Laura Laprida, Daniel Ibáñez and Javier Botet, among others.
 
 
Midnight X-Treme, Not for the Early Risers
 
Start getting your coffee ready, because Midnight X-Treme, the section for the most late-night crowd, is opening its doors once again. The untiring Joe Begos, the man behind diverse extravaganzas seen at the Festival such as Bliss and Christmas Bloody Christmas, returns home with Jimmy & Stiggs, a hallucinogenic nightmare involving drugs, alcohol and aliens shot in 16 mm. Frankie Freako by Steven Kostanski, one of the directors of The Void, promises a zany party with a strange creature. The tireless Lowell Dean will be with us twice, as he brings us Die Alone, a 'kid with amnesia vs zombies', and Dark Match, a 'wrestlers vs cultists' film. Also visiting us is Chainsaws Were Singing by Sander Maran, a hilarious action-horror-gore-musical-comedy-B-movie from Estonia.
 
Completing all the insomnia are films such as Kome Kongkiat Komesiri's Operation Undead, Hideki Takeuchi's Fly Me To The Saitama: From Biwa Lake With Love, John Adams and Toby Poser's Hell Hole, Sasha Rainbow's Grafted, Jean-Christophe Meurisse's Plastic Guns, Taichiro Natsume's The Beast Hand and Nicolás and Luciano Onetti's 1978.

Brigadoon, Coffee for the Real Coffee Lovers
 
The Brigadoon section, the Festival's space for free screenings and sessions, is once again the meeting point for moviegoers in love with the most uncomplicated titles and voices in genre. With a complete selection of shorts, feature films, and meetings/homages with artists who are always in demand, Brigadoon will delight the most restless palates with offerings that include Pierre Tsigaridis' Traumatika, Lg White's Tripping the Dark Fantastic, Ezra Tsegaye 's Monster on a Plane and Ben Goodger's Year 10. The icing on the cake is the re-release of the entire 360 minutes of the miniseries The Stand (Apocalypse), which will include a presentation and talk by its director Mick Garris and the award-winning Mike Flanagan.

Sitges Family, Fantastic Genre for All Ages
 
Because genre knows no age, the Festival will once again showcase the most fascinating family projects of the moment in Sitges Family. Among the films selected this year we find Goce Cvetanovski's John Vardar vs the Galaxy , the first animated film in the history of North Macedonia, Li Wei Chiu's Pigsy, winner of the Taipei Film Fest, and The Worlds Divide by Denver Jackson, creator of the series Esluna: The First Monolith, among many others.  

Horror Girls is Back with a Bang!
 
On the heels of the success of its first edition, Sitges is once again hosting Horror Girls, a series of conferences dedicated to European fantastic genre films and women's creations that highlight how the talent of female auteurs is valued in each one of the phases of the film product's value chain. As part of Horror Girls, we will be able to enjoy an encounter with actress Heather Langenkamp (Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Wes Craven's New Nightmare), who will receive the Time Machine Award at this year's Festival, and a conversation between Coralie Fargeat (director of The Substance and Revenge) and Carlota Pereda (director of Piggy and La Ermita), two of the most provocative and freshest voices in contemporary horror.  
 
Among the different activities, we also propose round tables on production and distribution with Priscilla Smith, Manon Barat, Antonia Nava, Nahikari Ipiña, Nuria Valls and Enrique López Lavigne; sessions dealing with the treatment of female leads in genre films with Lauren LaVera, Desirée de Fez, Iván Fund, Mònica Garcia Massagué, Heidi Honeycutt and Victoria McCollum; and conversations between filmmaker duos about their directing experiences (Paco Plaza & Denise Castro, Marysia Nikitiuk & Paul Urkijo, Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala).