SITGES FEST: Sion Sono will receive the Time Machine Award
The prolific Japanese director will be presenting the films ‘Tag’, ‘Love & Peace’ and ‘The Virgin Psychics’ at the Festival
Japanese cinema has one of its main present-day exponents in Sion Sono. Internationally famous and award-winning, this filmmaker and poet will be visiting the 48th Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia to pick up the Time Machine lifetime achievement award, and present three of his latest films: Tag, Love & Peace and The Virgin Psychics.
Sion Sono (Toyokawa, 1961) has become one of the essential names in modern Asian cinema, an irreverent cult director who’s managed to create a very personal film language throughout his career, where youth, death or religion appear as recurring obsessions. His success began with the stunning Suicide Club (2002) and was consolidated with the multi award winning Love Exposure (2008), an epic film with a runtime of four hours that was a radical critique of youth values. Other titles include Why Don’t You Play in Hell? (2013) and Tokyo Tribe (2014). With his unlimited creativity and in better shape than ever, Sion Sono plans to release a total of five films in 2015.
This fascinating director is a regular at the Festival, where he presented Cold Fish, winner of the Casa Àsia Award, in 2010, Guilty of Romance and Himizu in 2011 and Bad Film in 2013. Two of his latest madcap creations, Tag and Love & Peace, recently won the award for best feature film and actress, and the audience award, respectively, at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal.
Tag is a bloody, explosive and funny film where a group of high school girls face a shapeless threat that brutally attacks them. It’s an adaptation of the novel Riaru Onigokko, by Yusuke Yamada. Love & Peace, on the other hand, connects two storylines that begin with a dull, boring office worker, a wannabe musical star who, on a whim, decides to flush his pet turtle down the toilet. And in contrast to the psycho-supernatural horror in Tag and the socio-fantastic pyro-musical Love & Peace, comes The Virgin Psychics, an erotic comedy and youth fantasy about an impossible sexual revolution in the heart of Japan. Three proposals with Sion Sono’s inimitable signature that promise large doses of delusions at Sitges 2015.