The Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is set to host its 59th edition from 8 to 18 October in the coastal Catalan city. The event is one of the most important gatherings for fans of genre films, including horror, science fiction, and fantasy. This year’s festival will showcase a wide range of films, from new releases and restored classics to documentaries, family-friendly works, and special midnight screenings. As part of its membership in the Méliès International Festival Federation, the festival will also host the ceremony for the Méliès d’Argent Awards for Best European Production. The festival’s main competitive section, the Official Fantastic Competition, includes 36 films, many of which are European co-productions. It will open with the world premiere of Carlota Pereda’s survival-thriller Found Alive, starring US actress Chloë Grace Moretz and English actor Rupert Friend. Pereda previously won the Goya Award for Best Fiction Short Film in 2019 for Piggy and collected the Méliès d’Or at Sitges for the 2022 feature-length adaptation of the same title. Other films in the section include Paolo Strippoli’s The Spiral, which was in the Venice Film Festival competition, and Kohei Kadowaki’s We Are Aliens, shown at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Several new films will also have their world premieres in this section. Other notable films in the festival include Frost, directed by Pavle Vuckovic, which follows an introverted detective investigating a missing girl in rural Serbia and uncovering a secret tied to a mythical creature. 11, from Clàudia Serra and Paula Serra, follows a group of people who suddenly find an extra person has joined them. Víctor Moreno will debut with The Outside, an existential science-fiction film set in a simulation for a Mars mission. Daniel Romero’s The Daughters tells the story of a young woman kidnapped and forced to live among other girls held captive and made to act like their captors’ daughters. The Òrbita section, which features 17 films that blend genre elements with more experimental or unusual storytelling, includes works like Vintage Violence by Eugene Kotlyarenko, which premiered in Toronto, and Too Many Beasts by Sarah Arnold, which had its debut at Cannes. These films will compete for awards in this section. The New Visions section, dedicated to experimental and boundary-pushing films, will screen 28 works, including A Prayer for the Dying by Dara Van Dusen and Demons by Natalka Vorozhbyt. Animated films such as Gregor by Manu Gomez and Vertiginous by Quentin Dupieux will also be included. Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick will both receive the festival’s Grand Honorary Prize and will present their new horror-comedy film, Family Movie, created with their children, Sosie and Travis. Sir Peter Jackson will also receive the Grand Honorary Prize while presenting a new 4K restoration of his 1992 zombie comedy Braindead. The Time Machine Award will be given to contemporary horror director Robert Eggers, and the Méliès Career Award will go to Chilean-Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar.