As a lifelong fan of horror, I’d been longing to attend the Sitges Film Festival for a few years, but for one reason or another I never had the chance. At last, with my best friend in tow, this year I jumped at the opportunity to experience the 59th edition of the festival and secured seats for five screenings. While the festival started on October 8 and ended on October 18, I spent the long weekend of October 9-12 there, coinciding with Spanish regional and national festivities.
Sitges itself is a quaint coastal town with peaceful white streets that, in line with the film festival, were decorated with skeletons or monsters. Main streets were crowded with both locals and foreigners, and posters along the street announced the festival. This year, the main focus was the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Carrie, alongside the recent rise of religious horror. A festive atmosphere hung over these streets, and T-shirts reflected a love of horror and fantasy cinema.
My friend and I stayed in a hotel close to the three main venues premiering movies: Auditori Melià, Casino Prado Suburense, and L’Escorxador. Melià is the largest venue, L’Escorxador the smallest—it’s a former slaughterhouse, which feels appropriate for the festival. These venues are only a 10-minute walk away from each other, and you can enjoy nice views of the beach and sea on your way to Auditori Melià, and stop at stands selling merchandise, meeting points for fans, or just have a drink. There’s a street food area on a hill where food trucks sell expensive—albeit somewhat healthy—fast food, both salty and sweet.
Having familiarized ourselves with the area, we went to our first movie at Auditori Melià at 11pm: Joshua Giuliano’s River, starring Jany Levy and Jessica Rothe. Naturally, such iconic names and an intriguing premise—three siblings grieving over their dad’s death are stalked by a faceless killer on a river—had us hyped up in advance. Unfortunately, this first film was the greatest disappointment of our festival experience, but at least it made us hopeful that the next four movies would be an improvement! The problem lies not in the acting, which is great, as one would expect from the cast, but in the many plot holes and unexplored links. Scenes honoring previous classics can be easily detected, but River struggles to get its own story right in this mix of references, leaving viewers with many questions as to what the movie was about. It felt like it was trying to communicate something about trauma and the passing down of harmful Continue reading SITGES FILM FESTIVAL 2026 RECAP