THREE SPANISH PRODUCTIONS AND AN ANIMATED FILM WILL COMPETE IN FANCINE FOR THE FIRST TIME

Illustrator Bill Plympton has designed the Passport stickers for the 31st edition and will visit Málaga to present a sneak-peak of his new projects

This Friday, the fantastic film festival from the University of Málaga has announced the ten feature films that will make up the official section of its 31st edition, which will be celebrated from the 10th to the 18th of November in the Albéniz theater and other university locations with science as its common thread. It’s a diverse selection of genre titles which, for the first time in its history, includes an animated film and three Spanish productions, the largest quota of national titles since its inception.

 Leading the trio of Spanish films that will compete for the 9,000 euro prize for the best film is 'Veneciafrenia', the new film by Álex de la Iglesia and the first of the label 'The Fear Collection', an alliance of Pokeepsie Films with Sony Pictures Spain and Amazon Studios created to promote original feature films. This popular Basque director wrote the screenplay as well as directing, together with his regular collaborator Jorge Guerricaechevarria. This horror film starring Ingrid García Jonsson and Silvia Alonso, among others, explores the effects of mass tourism. Venetians, tired of seeing their city die due to the constant flow of tourists, decide to put an end to the situation. Some Spanish tourists, unaware of this macabre plan, travel to the city of canals to have fun, but there they must fight for their lives. ‘Veneciafrenia’ will be screened in Malaga after its recent preview at the Sitges Festival and events such as the Donostia Horror Film Week.

Also in competition will be 'Visitante', Alberto Evangelio's debut feature, who, after taking on short-format projects and television series, debuts with a science fiction film that delves into guilt and the different manitestations that fear can take from an intimate and fantastic point of view via a universe of parallel realities. The protagonist of this intriguing story is Marga, a young woman who, in the midst of a crisis with her husband, decides to spend a few days in an old house in her village. There, she begins to perceive strange phenomena that terrify her.

This collection of Spanish cinema is completed by a film further removed from fantasy and horror and closer to a thriller, a genre that has been gaining strength in recent editions of the festival. It’s ‘La hija', Manuel Martín Cuenca’s latest audiovisual project, a suspenful and tense film about a pregnant fifteen-year-old who accepts her tutor’s offer to improve her life in exchange for giving up the baby she is expecting. Javier Gutiérrez, Patricia López Arnáiz and Irene Virgüez lead the cast of this story that addresses maternal instinct and desire from different perspectives that touch the limits of morality.

Additionally, the official section of the 31st Fancine includes an animated film in the competition, which is an unprecedented novelty in the history of the university festival

It is 'Belle: The Dragon and the Freckled Princess', from the hand of the acclaimed Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda, known for works such as 'Mirai' or 'The girl who leapt through time', film screened for the section 'El Fantástico en Familia' in the last edition of Fancine. His new film, set in a virtual universe, proposes a personal and colorful reimagining of the classic tale of ‘The Beauty and the Beast’ that combines the dramatic and musical genres in the backdrop of social media.

Another Asian candidate for the festival's highest prize is 'Cliff Walkers', a project directed by the well-known director Zhang Yimou, who returns to the big screen with a story within the diplomatic conflict between Japan and China before World War II. The snowy landscapes of historic Manchuria and its action scenes give the film the visual power that characterizes this popular director’s cinema, who makes his first foray into the espionage subgenre with a plot filled with violence, betrayals, and a strong political component.

Fancine will also host the Spanish premiere of 'Hinterland', an Austrian production directed by Oscar-winning Stefan Ruzowitzky ('The Counterfeiters'), who veers in his new film project towards an almost expressionistic aesthetic to set the scene, at the end of the first Great War, a story of revenge centered on a former prisoner who tries to hunt down the murderer of his comrades.

And the wild, playful tone Fancine is known for, will come from ‘Wild Men’, a rare gem from Denmark directed by Thomas Daneskov, who puts a new twist on existential crises via his curious protagonist: Martin, a family man tired of responsibilities in the midst of a midlife crisis. He decides to end his gray routine by adopting a new lifestyle: becoming a wild caveman, thus returning to the origins of humanity. The logistics of it all will daunting situations in a globalized world dominated by technology where there is no room for his bows, arrows and fur coats.

In total, Fancine has confirmed seven films as part of its official section, but they are joined by three titles that have already been released previous programming previews. They are ‘Prisoners of the Ghostland’, the spectacular cinematic partnership between Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono and Nicolas Cage; 'In the Earth', Ben Wheatley's terrifying film about a group of scientists seeking a cure for a terrible virus in the middle of an enchanted forest; and 'Tides', a German science fiction film directed by Tim Fehlbaum and set in a post-apocalyptic future in which an astronaut must decide the fate of the small population that has managed to survive on Earth.

Bill Plympton Passport

These ten films will all be part of the Fancine passport, an concept that has existed for six years now, thanks to the support of Fancine’s most devoted enthusiasts, which has become somewhat a collector’s item. As is tradition, Fancine will offer the possibility of winning various prizes and rewarding the support of attendees through a system by which the public can exchange their tickets for custom “gatete” (cat) stickers that each correspond to a film from this year’s Fancine program. The award-winning American director and illustrator Bill Plympton has been commissioned to design the stickers for this edition, in his particular pencil-sketched style. Each one of them shows a maneki-neko, Fancine’s mascot and logo, characterized to represent the films in this year's program.

Likewise, the Málaga fantastic film festival will be attended by Plympton himself, who will offer a conference as part of the programming at the Albéniz cinema. Some of his most successful pieces will be screened at the session, such as 'Your Face', which awarded him an Oscar nomination for best animated short film in 1987, as well as previews of his most recent works, some still unpublished and others in the post-production process.

In this way, Fancine completes the tribute to the famous cartoonist that began during the past 30th anniversary, when a selection of his most representative works was shown in a retrospective that was part of the 2020 online listings. Among them were 'The Tune', 'Cheatin' (which was part of the Informative section of the festival in 2013), 'I Married a Strange Person', 'Idiots and Angels', 'Mutant Aliens' and the short film series 'Guard Dog', for which the author received his second Oscar nomination in 2005 thanks to this intrepid dog who keeps getting into trouble.