Sitges Announces Méliès d’Argent Winners 2025

A fundamental part of the magic of Sitges has always come from its audience, growing stronger year after year.

Despite the absence of the El Retiro theater and without the support of a holiday weekend, the 58th edition of SITGES – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia still achieved unprecedented results. The Festival closed with 130,322 viewers, surpassing both 2024 and 2023, and total participation across screenings, workshops, exhibitions, the Zombie Walk and parallel activities reached 178,171 attendees.

A clear upward trend that reaffirmed the vitality of fantastic cinema and the Festival’s role as a global reference point.

And the Melies d’argent winners are…

The winner of the Méliès d’Argent Award for Best European Fantastic Genre Feature Film at Sitges is “Feels Like Home”
(Itt érzem magam otthon) by Gábor Holtai (Hungary 2025, 125 minutes).

A woman is kidnapped by a delusional family who are convinced that she’s their daughter who went missing. In order to survive, she will have to play along, pretending to be someone else while desperately trying to find a way out of this nightmare. A psychological thriller constructed as an allegory on appearances, where the effective use of space creates a feeling of claustrophobia and discomfort from confinement, another of this film’s underlying themes.

The winner of the Méliès d’Argent Award for Best European Fantastic Genre Short Film at Sitges is “The Quinta’s Ghost” by James A. Castillo (El Fantasma de la Quinta, Spain 2025, 17 minutes).

In 1819, an exhausted Francisco de Goya retires to “La Quinta del Sordo” estate and country house, seeking isolation and peace. There, illness and loneliness push him towards a final confrontation with the ghosts of his past. In a feverish trance, he paints the Black Paintings directly on the walls, in a desperate attempt to exorcise his visions.

The competition is organized in collaboration with the Méliès International Festivals Federation (MIFF) and is open to European-produced short films in the fantastic genre. The award is given to the short film that receives the highest number of votes from the audience.