A remote and dilapidated lighthouse proves an increasingly sinister backdrop for newly widowed father, Pablo (Hugo Silva) and his adolescent daughter Lidia (Zoe Arnao) in the first international teaser trailer for the upcoming Ángeles Hernández thriller “Restless Waters, Shivering Lights” (“El Faro”).
Distribution in Spain is handled by Alfa Pictures with an expected release date of Jan. 26.
Buenos Aires-based sales-production outfit FilmSharks handles global sales outside of Spain. It has shared withPvNewin exclusivity a first look international teaser trailer with founder Guido Rud relaying the project is a modern take on horror along the lines of “Relic” and “Shutter Island” admitting, “the audience is welcoming and pre-sales are hot.”
The narrative follows father and daughter through their strained relations after the death of the family matriarch (Irene Montalà). When Lidia attempts to take her own life, they’re forced to take a pause and reconnect at the family’s long-abandoned property, the seaside air thick with tension and a local family member (Sergio Castellanos) sowing further discord.
Succinctly capturing the foreboding side of the otherwise-picturesque Balearic Islands, the trailer opens with a sweeping shot of the makeshift abode, jutting up from the rocky cliffs, surrounded by the tempered waves that signify trouble is looming.
An aerial shot of the family car winding down a serpent-shaped road full of curves is then glimpsed before the two are introduced, Pablo’s eyes framed in the rearview mirror peering at his headphone-clad daughter after she asks him if he believes in ghosts.
Chaos deepens as the teaser jumps to the property, the score amplifying the uneasy and mounting sense of apprehension as the two explore the home, in shambles. The house becomes a central character, its surroundings cradle it in a macabre sense of turmoil and we see the protagonists growing more impatient, the grip of their tight-knit bond loosening by the day. The vacant and solemn town mirrors their slow descent into a cruel new reality.
The trailer continues as Lidia meets her cousin, a troubled teen who further compounds the strife. She draws increasingly dark depictions of her life within her sketchbook and the events turn from happenings that remained in lucid dreams to waking nightmares, physical manifestations of grief that they can no longer deny that now put them in the direct line of certain danger.
Closing on a shot of Lidia and her deceased mother in a boat, the trailer ends with a silver lining as the doting apparition promises Lidia that everything will be all right, a comfort too late in the making to ease anxiety, but a small comfort all the same.
In a December interview withPvNewahead of the film’s debut within Ventana Sur’s Blood Window strand, Hernández stated that “building the characters through their fears, traumas and weaknesses was key. But always with a halo of hope.”
“Restless Waters, Shivering Lights” is produced by Hernández and David Matamoros at Barcelona-based Mr. Miyagi Films which co-produced Netflix’s second most-viewed non-English language movie of all time “The Platform,” and by Argentina’s Vista Sur (“Dalia And The Red Book”).
The film enjoyed broad support through incentives from the Fundació Mallorca Turisme/Mallorca Film Commission and the Fundació Foment Turisme de Menorca/Menorca Film Commission alongside Spain’s increasingly muscular funding programs and Argentina’s INCAA.
