MOTELX with award for "remarkable women in horror"

The 19th edition of MOTELX is scheduled from September 9th to 15th, at Cinema São Jorge, and one of the highlights is the presence in Lisbon of Gale Anne Hurd, producer and screenwriter with “an unrepeatable trajectory” having produced, among others, the films “Aliens”, “The Abyss”, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and “Armageddon”.

In September, Gale Anne Hurd will receive the Noémia Delgado Award for Notable Women in Horror, created by MOTELX to “recover the memory of pioneering authors — often forgotten — and, at the same time, celebrate the new female talents who are redefining contemporary horror.”

The award is named after the poet and director Noémia Delgado (1933-2016), “a pioneer of fantasy in Portuguese cinema and of genre cinema made by women”, highlights the organization.

The program now announced once again has Portuguese cinema as one of its pillars, namely with three feature films, in competition for the Méliès d'Argent Award — Best European Feature: “Sombras”, a debut by Jorge Cramez in the horror genre, “A Pianista”, by Nuno Bernardo, and “Crendices”, “the first entirely Madeiran horror film, directed by the comedy group 4Litro”.

Twelve films are competing for the Best Portuguese Horror Short Film award, "which bear witness to the vitality of national horror" and which address social issues, such as housing insecurity in "O próximo passo" by Pedro Batalha, or mental health in "Resut" by Mafalda Jacob.

The Portuguese representation for the Méliès d'Argent Award for Best European Short Film includes, among others, “Grito”, by Luís Costa, the animations “Sequencial”, by Bruno Caetano, and “Amarelo Banana”, by Alexandre Sousa, and the film “Borbulha”, by Fernando Alle.

In the “Sala de Culto” section, MOTELX is showing for the first time in Portugal “Los mil ojos del asesino”, an Italian-Spanish espionage thriller by director Juan Borsch, filmed in Lisbon a few months before April 25, 1974.

Lisbon was chosen as the setting for this film—also shot in Barcelona and Rome, inspired by James Bond and martial arts—"because it was an economically accessible city, where political leaders at the time welcomed the opportunity to project a positive image abroad," explains the festival.

MOTELX will also screen, among others, the comedy “A Useful Ghost”, by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, which won an award this year at the Critics' Week of the Cannes Film Festival, “Opus”, the directorial debut of journalist Mark Anthony Green, with Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich in the cast, and the already announced Brazilian film “Bury Your Dead”, by Marco Dutra.

In parallel with the cinema sessions, MOTELX will host, on September 10th and 11th, the first edition of the Digital Film Festival, “a space for exchange and innovation between different producers of audiovisual content”.