The Sitges Fantastic Film Festival opens this year for the first time with a film directed by a woman. The film Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon by filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour has been chosen to open the 54th edition.

The theme of the 2021 Sitges Film Festival is "the werewolf and the beast within," and it will have a constant presence at the Festival beyond the films it will present. 

Amirpour was at Sitges in 2014 with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and in 2016 with The Bad Batch. At this edition, she will present her film starring Jeon Jong-seo in the role of a young woman with strange abilities who escapes from a center for the mentally ill.

The Festival will be held in person from Oct. 7 to Oct. 17 and will be hosting the world premier of Veneciafrenia, the latest film by Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia, which will be the official presentation in Sitges of "The Fear Collection" label — an initiative that aims to give a voice to genre directors to produce original feature films.

Other Spanish films will be screened, like Visitor, by Alberto Evangelio; La pasajera, by Raúl Cerezo and Fernando González Gómez, a road movie with an unwanted alien guest on board; Jacinto, by Javi Camino, a rural horror film that the director himself defines as a cross between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Forrest Gump; as well as Tres, by Juanjo Giménez.

As with every year, the festival has films to satisfy horror genre lovers such as Last Night in Soho and The Sparks Brothers, by British director Edgar Wright; the Icelandic film Lamb, by Valdimar Jóhannsson with Noomi Rapace; The Deep House, a supernatural horror underwater by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury; and a new installment of the Halloween saga, by David Gordon Green, with Jamie Lee Curtis.

In addition, there will be animated films, some Asian films and a series of debut films that will play a prominent role in the Festival.