The film The Shape of Water, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, will open the 2017 Sitges-International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia the organising committee has announced. The festival will raise the curtain on its 50th edition on 5 October with Del Toro's fantastical tale set in the Cold War. Del Toro himself will act as patron of the fiftieth anniversary.
In a disturbing high-security laboratory, during the Cold War, an unusual connection is produced between two seemingly separate worlds. The life of the lonely Elisa, who works in the lab, changes completely when she comes across a secret experiment.
Guillermo del Toro's film stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg and Octavia Spencer, and has a soundtrack composed by Alexandre Desplat. The film will be released in Catalonia in January 2018.
A lover of fantastic creatures and friend of Sitges, Del Toro opened the 2006 festival with Pan's Labyrinth, although his first visit to the competition was in 1993, when he won the prize for best script for Cronos, his first feature film.