MOTELX Festival pays tribute to the producer of 'The Terminator'

Directed by Francis Lawrence, 'The Long Walk' is an apocalyptic thriller set in a totalitarian America, in which a group of young people participate in a non-stop walking competition, forced to maintain a minimum speed or risk being executed.

The Noémia Delgado Award for Notable Women in Horror, which is in its first edition this year, pays tribute to the American producer and screenwriter Gale Anne Hurd, responsible for films such as 'Aliens', 'The Abyss', 'The Terminator' and 'Armageddon'.

Gale Anne Hurd, the festival's guest of honor, will be in Lisbon to lead a masterclass and receive the award 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", the organization highlighted.

The festival's program once again features Portuguese cinema as one of its pillars, with three feature films competing for the Méliès d'Argent Award - Best European Feature: 'Sombras', Jorge Cramez's debut 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 Short Horror 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 the first Portuguese version of 'Los mil ojos del asesino', an Italian-Spanish espionage thriller by director Juan Borsch, filmed in Lisbon a few months before the 25th of April 1974 revolution.

MOTELX will also screen, among others, the comedy 'A Useful Ghost', by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, which won an award this year at the Critics' Week at 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, which will also be in Lisbon.

'Freaky Tales', by the duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, selected for the Sundance Festival, and 'The Toxic Avenger', by Macon Blair, a revisitation of the classic '2Toxic!', which will also be shown, are other films joining the festival's lineup.

On the 13th, attention will be given to Japanese cinema with the screening of 'Chime', by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 'Hotspring Sharkattack', by Morihito Inoue, and 'New Group', by Yuta Shimotsu.

In addition to Gale Anne Hurd and Marco Dutra, this edition's guests include directors Ben Wheatley, Dennis Iliadis and Julia Kowalski, producer Rodrigo Teixeira and Austrian filmmaker Norbert Pfaffenbichler, who will present his trilogy '2551' at SectionX.

The festival's closing ceremony, on the 15th, will feature the screening of 'The Home', a horror story by James DeMonaco, set in a nursing home, according to the full program announced by the organization.

Cinema S. Jorge, Cinemateca Portuguesa and Jardins do Bombarda are MOTELX's main locations.

The full program, times and parallel activities are available on the festival website.