Zombie survival, a virus that targets the rich, and experimental methods: Catalan talent at Sitges

Zombie survival adventures, experimental filmmaking methods, and a virus that targets the rich – these are just some examples of Catalan talent shining on the international platform provided at Sitges, at Catalonia’s biggest film festival.

Carles Torrens, whose 2011 directorial debut Apartment 143 was a smash hit, premiered his latest work, the zombie survival adventure ‘Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End’, at this year’s Sitges festival. The Catalan director says that above all, he wanted to talk about human selfishness with the film.

“You could describe the film a bit as ‘political fiction,’ as the book it’s based on is too, as it describes what Spanish society would do” at the beginning of an apocalypse, Torrens said at his Sitges press conference. The film begins on day one of a global society-destroying emergency, and starts with people slowly realising their new reality. 

An examination of people and society, and set in a world which has already experienced the Covid-19 pandemic, Torrens asked rhetorically, “Who is the best survivor? The one doing things legally because they think at some point this situation will end and they’ll go back to the welfare state that they know, or those who never got to grow up in this welfare state, in democracy, because they’ve always been marginalized?”

Blind non-professional acting cast

Elsewhere, Catalan director Marc Recha, known for an avant-garde approach to filmmaking, has given a world premiere of his latest experimental work, ‘Centaures de la Nit’, at Sitges.

The film is shot mostly at Poblet Monastery in Tarragona with a cast largely made up of non-professional blind actors.

One of the challenges of making the film was capturing ”the verticality of the space” on camera, Recha said. The Poblet Monastery buildings “have a lot of vertical space in them, which offers the image of the sky which works very well with the imagination of blind people.” 

The film has poetic and surreal touches and is shot in black and white, and is set in the Poblet Monastery in the 1960s. The film is part of the New Visions section of the Sitges Festival, and is partly inspired by the world of the Slovenian blind photographer Evgen Bavcar and the imagination of Luis Buñuel.

A virus that only targets the rich

Featuring English, Catalan, and Spanish dialogue, Rich Flu, by Basque director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia is also competing in the official selection this year. The Catalan-produced work imagines a world plagued by a virus that only affects the rich and powerful. 

Director Gaztelu-Urrutia won the top award at the Sitges festival in 2019 with ‘El Hoyo’, and with his latest work, he wanted to subvert privilege roles and to play with the experience of migration experienced “by a privileged person from the Global North, who in normal circumstances would never be persecuted or discriminated against.”  

All crises "have taught us that those who have the most will always have the best chance of getting ahead, whether in a climate crisis, a natural catastrophe or a war," the director explained. As such, he wanted to ask what would happen if "the curse" fell on those who have historically been "immune to almost everything." 

The film is competing in the official selection at Sitges International Fantasy and Horror Film Festival. 

Short films

Competing in the official shorts category, Malet, by Roger Danès Morera and Alfred Pérez-Fargas, is set in rural Catalonia in the 16th century. A healer arrives in a town to aid the mayor's son, but a local warns him that a curse hangs over the family.

Malet was screened ahead of the festival opener, 'Presence', directed by Steven Soderbergh.  

International platform for students

As well as established filmmakers, the festival also provides an opportunity for film students in Catalonia to showcase their work, with short films on show grouped under the Nova Autoria category.

Marine Auclair recently graduated from the ESCAC film school and shared the award for Best Direction-Execution for her Catalan language piece, Blava Terra.

Also showing this year was Lluna by Pol Mansachs, whose work comes from the ECIB school.