Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary (pictured) took home the best film award and David Cronenberg best director for Spider from the Fantastic Section of Spain's 35th annual Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia (Oct 3-13).

Cronenberg was also the recipient of one of this year's two Time Machine (Maquina del Temps) career achievement awards at Sitges; Mexican director Guillermo del Toro was the other. Dino de Laurentiis received the festival's Honorary Award.

Other top prizes in this year's competition went to Jeremy Northam for best actor in Cypher and Angela Bettis for best actress in May, a film which also took home a best script prize for writer-director Lucky McKee. Thai hit The Eye won best photography.

Additional awards went to Cabin Fever for best make-up, A Snake Of June (Rokugatsu No Hebi) for best art direction, Reign Of Fire for best visual effects and best original soundtrack to Sonic Youth for Olivier Assayas' Demonlover. Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) and Hideo Nakata's Dark Water (Honogurai mizu no soku kara) earned special mentions from the jury.

Actor Anthony Hopkins was in town over the closing weekend to promote his return as Hannibal Lecter in Brett Ratner's recent box office hit Red Dragon, which closed the Official Fantastic Section. Spaniard Alex de la Iglesia world-premiered his new film 800 Bullets (800 Balas) (pictured) in the festival's Gran Angular section over the weekend.

Isaki Lacuesta's pseudo-documentary Cravan Vs Cravan won the Gran Angular section's Audience Award for best film, while Spain's Paco Plaza won the Melies de Plata award for best European fantasy feature film.