Vanessa McMahon

The Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia; October 4-14, 2012.

Arguably the world’s most renown international horror/fantasy film festival takes place each year on the Balearic Sea riviera in Sitges, Spain at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia. The festival opened yesterday for its 45th edition with the Spanish murder mystery thriller ‘El Cuerpo’ ('The Body', 2012) by director Oriol Paulo starring José Coronado, Belén Rueda, Hugo Silva and Aura Garrido.

Sitges is famous for hosting the world’s most celebrated horror and fantasy films, from low budget international indies to major Hollywood blockbusters; Sitges is like the Cannes Film Festival for the fantastic film genre. Every year major industry players attend the festival to promote their films.

Some of this year’s festival guests will include: director Neil Jordan (‘The Company of Wolves’, 1987 and ‘Interview With a Vampire’, 1994); actor Elijah Wood (‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Maniac’, 2012); actress Barbara Steele (‘The Butterfly Room’, 2012); director Jennifer Lynch (‘Chained’, 2012), producer Brian Witten (‘Chernobyl Diaries’, 2012; The Barrens, 2012), director Dario Argento (Dracula 3D, 2012), director Rian Johnson (‘Looper’, 2012) and producer Eli Roth (‘Hostel’ 2005, ‘Aftershock’ 2012).

This year’s festival promises to pack a punch and, hopefully, feed a nightmare or two :-) for fantasy/horror film fans the world over. To learn more about Sitges and the films to be shown, check out their website:

http://sitgesfilmfestival.com/eng