The Sitges festival keeps growing. If last year was a record edition with more than 70,800 tickets sold, 2023 will surpass it by far. Four days before the fantasy film contest ends, 78,744 tickets have already been sold, 13% more than in 2022, as the organization announced at the traditional lunch with the press. “On Monday we already collected everything we collected last year”, said Mònica Garcia, general director of the Sitges Foundation, who highlighted the “behaviour of an audience that has an anxiety to come and demonstrates a degree of loyalty extraordinary”, which, in his opinion, “is the closest thing to a music festival in cinema”.
“A community effect that occurs around the festival that allows us to grow within the little we can, because the rooms are what they are”, he assured.
Regarding this, the director of the contest, Àngel Sala, acknowledged that the festival needs “more infrastructure because, if we had more spaces to fill, there would be more repetitions or press passes and more people would come”. This has no ceiling”, he indicated, adding that for years it has been considered that the festival could “take advantage” of some facilities in the coastal city or even convert some of them. And that we are working with the institutions to make this possible.
At a time when film festivals are betting on reducing the programming of the official section, Sitges continues with 31 films. “We have a wide official section because if we only put 15, they kill us. People want to get lost in a forest of films, and this is the style of the festival.” However, he pointed out that they are studying “some change in the regulations” for the official section, since “films now have a very short life and films from the beginning of the year remain old”. Looking ahead to the 2024 edition, he advanced that science fiction will have a lot of weight with an idea “that is not yet closed, but very advanced of a very important presence referring to a tremendously famous and popular film”.
In the speech, Sala claimed the “formidable talents” that are coming out of film schools and the need to “retain them here so that they don’t have to leave Spain” and lamented the “enormous” deficit of women who are dedicated to the fantasy genre. For this reason, he remarked that it is necessary to “study and research and among the contemporary talent that exists in schools, that women have the possibility to cast their fantastic gaze on Spanish cinema. I think it’s about time. In France, the Nordic countries and the United States are very advanced”.
