Thanks to the translation of our Staff Reporter, Renata, we have an interview from the Sitges Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain from the website 24 horas. Here is an excerpt from the article:
Heartless is a contender for Sitges official competition and to perform in it, Sturgess prepared himself by saving lots of tragic and devastating stories he found on newspapers. “We read awful things everyday, but it seems we have learned to be immune to it,” he criticizes. The idea is all those real stories of our modern world would affect him as much as possible. To feel even closer to the story he wore his character’s birthmark on his own face, just to see how “people would react to it.”
It´s been 14 years since Ridley’s last movie, “to be honest, I believe I have lost confidence in myself after I did The Passion of Darkly Noon, which was not seen with good eyes by the audiences. But I never stopped wanting to make another movie and I continued to work in other projects and making art films at home,” explained the director. Finally, fate helped him a bit. On the day he finished writing Heartless, a friend and producer asked if he had any idea for a new project and if he was interested in making it happen. Even if the movie brings sad memories to Ridley, “my long time manager was brutally killed while I was starting to write Heartless.”
And we have some images from yesterday’s Sitges press interviews. You can see all the Sitges images here.
Fangoria’s Tony Timpone Sitges Film Festival blog had this to say about Heartless:
I went into this film largely blind, which may be the best way to appreciate all the film’s terrifying surprises. 21’s Jim Sturgess (a gut-wrenching and emotional performance) stars as a photographer in East London whose hellish existence (he has a horrible birthmark on his face and lives in a city of urban blight) gets even more hellish when he encounters real demonic horror. Let’s leave the plot synopsis there so you can discover the film’s dark pleasures on your own. Ridley later tells me that the film has not nailed a U.S. distrib yet, but don’t expect that to last for long.
Thanks again to Renata’s translation we have these comments from another Sitges Film Festival blog on DimensionFriki:
Let´s talk about now the pleasant surprise of the day, Heartless, an horror movie presented by its director Philip Ridley and its leading man, Jim Sturgess. It tells te story of Jamie, a young photographer tormented by a birthmark that covers his face and body. His abssession with it is mixed with the violent and terrible urban scene of London, where he faces demons on the streets. In my opinion is one of the best and most perfect movies of the whole festival. And please, give Jim Sturgess right now a BAFTA, and Oscar, whatever! His performance was too impressive.
