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Co-organized with CAA Media Finance, a new San Sebastian Festival Creative Investors’ Conference will see many of the good and great of the international film business descend on September’s fest edition to be pitched 10 higher-budget Spanish movies by their producers.

The Conference will run Sept.19-20. In a cosmopolitan lineup, titles pitched include international co-productions such as “Whalemen (At the Ends of the Earth)” from “Everest” director Baltasar Kormákur as well as the latest from “Amama” helmer Asier Altuna and “Raqa,” from Gerardo Herrero, an Academy Award wining producer for “The Secret in Their Eyes.”

The conference’s high-profile international investors, producers, agents and executives take in Mubi’s Bobby Allen, Piers Wenger at A24 Europe, Focus Features’s Kiska Higgs, 30West’s Trevor Groth, Vincent Maraval at Wild Bunch International and Netflix’s Teresa Moneo.

Also confirmed are the Elysian Film Group’s Danny Perkins, Neon CEO Tom Quinn,...

Genre festival planned a physical event but had to shift online due to the pandemic.

Josh Wallace and Devin Das’s US horror satire Keeping Company has won best feature at the inaugural Easter edition of UK genre film festival Grimmfest.

The film received its European premiere at the virtual festiva and follows two salesmen who knock on the wrong door and find themselves trapped in a stranger’s basement.

A special mention went to Kourosh Ahari’s The Night, an Iranian psychological horror starring Cannes award-winner Shahab Hosseini (The Salesman), which IFC Films acquired for North America last year...

Carolina Astudillo’s “Song to a Lady in the Shadow,” Fabrizio Ferraro’s “The Luminous View,” Jo Sol’s “Armugan,” and Miguel Angel Blanca’s “Magaluf Ghost Town” feature among a 31-title lineup hosted by promotion board Catalan Films at an European Film Market virtual screening room.

Produced by Cornelius Films, “Song” marks the third feature outing of director Carolina Astudillo. A doc-fiction hybrid, it turns on a family whose father is exiled in France after fighting for the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War. Echoing Homer’s Penelope, his wife stays behind with their children in a Catalan village suffering hunger, deprivation, economic crisis and unemployment.

Another awaited documentary, “Magaluf,” is produced by Boogaloo Films in co-production with France’s Les Films d’Ici. Director Blanca depicts the consequences of unbridled tourism in a popular destination in the Balearic Islands, with a touch of comedy.

Selected at this year’s Forum showcase,...

Grimmfest have today announced the launch of their Grimmfest Easter Edition, a new annual event taking place over the Easter Weekend, and complimenting the long-established festival in October.

Easter is traditionally a time for rebirth, renewal, resurrection. But as the Pandemic continues to rage, and the world remains on lockdown for the foreseeable future, it is also a time for rethinking. Thus, while the Grimmfest team had hoped to be hosting a ‘live’ Easter event, instead, the Grimmfest Easter Edition will be taking place online, and will build on the success of Grimmfest 2020 online experience.

The festival will open on Thursday April 1st with our preview night that will feature the UK premiere of Kourosh Ahari’s surreal and sulphurous Iranian American haunted hotel horror The Night, which has already earned deserved comparisons to Kubrick’s The Shining, alongside the UK premiere of Lluis Danes’ visually ravishing reimagining of the...

Kourosh Ahari’s ‘The Night’ and Lluís Danés’ ‘The Barcelona Vampiress’ to open genre festival.

UK genre film festival Grimmfest has revealed the line-up for its first Easter edition, which will open with Kourosh Ahari’s The Night and Lluís Danés’ The Barcelona Vampiress.

The spin-off event to Grimmfest was established after its traditional October festival was moved online, due to the pandemic, and was meant to mark a return to physical screenings for the organisation. But ongoing cinema closures and restrictions will also see the Grimmfest Easter Edition go virtual from April 1-5.

The festival will open with psychological horror The Night,...

Barcelona-based Filmax has snagged international rights to “The Burning Cold” (“El frio que quema”), the directorial feature debut of Catalan filmmaker Santi Trullenque, who has established a solid reputation in advertising and television.

Filmax will be presenting the first images and a promo to buyers during this week’s American Film Market.

“The Burning Cold” explores a little-known aspect of the World War II Jewish diaspora: the escape of Jews through Andorra, a micro sovereign country in the Pyrenees mountain range of the Iberian Peninsula.

Set in the winter of 1943 in Andorra, which shares borders with France and Spain, the drama centers on Antonio and Sara, a young married couple who are expecting their first child.

The relative peace in their small town is upended when a family of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution arrive to seek refuge. Sara, in particular, will have to face her own internal conflicts and decide...

Brandon Cronenberg has proven to be an heir to his father, David, with his grisly sophomore feature, “Possessor Uncut,” which took home best film and director at Spain’s 53rd Sitges Film Festival on Saturday.

Running Oct.8-18, the fantastic film fest, Europe’s biggest, wrapped yesterday in Sitges, a picturesque seaside resort just south of Barcelona.

With these new honors, Brandon Cronenberg also suggests that his best new director award at 2012’s Sitges for debut feature, “Antiviral,” was no fluke.

A sci fi-horror hybrid, “Possessor Uncut” tracks an elite corporate assassin who uses brain-implant technology to take possession of other people’s bodies and slay prominent targets. The film first premiered at Sundance where Variety’s Peter Debruge described it as a “brilliant sci-fi puzzle” that was “more than just another bracingly extreme psychological thriller.”

Just Philippot’s “The Swarm” also snagged two awards: the Special Jury Prize and...