Titles from Caye Casas, whose jarring film “The Coffee Table” earned a nod from Stephen King, and a comeback project from former Eli Roth co-scribe Guillermo Amoedo (“The Inhabitant”), figure into a six-title slate for the fifth edition of the Santiago Int’l Film Festival’s Morbido Lab.
According to Sanfic co-founder Gabriela Sandoval, the competition was tight this year as the strand “had many more applications than in 2023.”
Morbido founder and CEO Pablo Guisa Koestinger will be on the ground to advise the talent, both established and budding, leading them towards full development and financing for their chilling projects. Director Luis Javier Henaine, who recently released genre highlight and Morbido Fest Bronze Skull Winner, “Disappear Completely” and veteran scribe, producer and director Adrian Garcia Bogliano,whose 2012 Title “Here Comes The Devil” swept the Austin Fantastic Fest, will provide additional mentorship.
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This year’s selections center on the fantastic, the spiritual and the zany with dark humor in sharp focus in a campy title from Casas, “El Show del Gran Luciferio,” andMarco Caltieri’s executivethriller, “Variable Capital.”
The vicious mortal realm and its inherent violence are represented through a chilling kidnapping narrative inDiego Ayala’s “Delivery” and a cannibal-conundrum in Daniel M. Caneiro’s “Voracious.”
Apocalyptic apparitions and an age-old vex take center stage and round out the titles in Guillermo Amoedo’s latest, “Loved Ones,” and “Silence is the Music of the Devil,” from Cremance, respectively.
Guisa looks back to predict a bright future for previous pitches from the strand, stating that several past projects are “currently in different development stages while others have become a reality, release dates on the horizon.”
He points toCristian Ponce’s “A Mother’s Embrace,” to be released on Netflix Latam in October, “becoming the laboratory’s flagship success story,” and nods to other projects that have been part of the lab’s lineup, including “‘UPIRO’ by director Oscar Martin and producer Elena Muñoz, in pre-production; ‘Cachorra’ by director Elisa Puerto and producer Edher Campos, which won the Guadalajara Festival genre pitch and will be at Fantastic 7 in Cannes 2025; and ‘Plasma’ by director Daniel Aspillaga and producer Pauline Ferretti, which became part of this year’s Frontières’ co-production market’s lineup.”
“I couldn’t be happier with the results of the Morbido Lab, a successful Spanish-speaking genre film incubator, where Ibero-American talent gathers to create and nourish the next generation of fantastic films and filmmakers,” Guisa summed up.
Below, the 2024 Sanfic-Morbido Lab Lineup:
“El Show del Gran Luciferio,” Spain, Mexico Dir: Caye Casas Prod: Norbert Llaràs, Albert Pons
Lights, camera and depraved action,the narrative follows charismatic and macabre Lucifero, a showman who presents his audience with a devilish competition program that challenges contestants beyond their bounds for six million euros. The terror televised, the host and his fiendish following shed light on the limits of human morality. From acclaimed shock maestro Casas, the project teases, “sex, humor and death, live!”
“Loved Ones” (“Seres Queridos”),Spain, Mexico Dir: Guillermo Amoedo Prod: Hervey Grisalez
Resilient Mara and her young daughter Alicia live under an increasingly odd set of rules in order to survive otherworldly dangers in a post-apocalyptic world, where ghosts reign and the humans that remain face prosecution by the very souls of those they once loved. A comeback for revered Uruguayan writer-director Amoedo, the Eli Roth co-scribe whose last project, “The Inhabitant,” thrilled theater and streaming audiences alike.
“Silence is the Music of the Devil” (“El Silencio es la Música del Diablo”), Mexico,Dir: Cremance Prod: Baño Turco Productions
A family curse that conjures the Devil leads Dalia to abandon her voice after her mother’s mysterious death. Her former therapist proposes a strange therapy, and as Dalia explores this ‘music-based therapy for psychic traumas,’ a grim objective unfurls. According to Cremance, the project is unique as “it definitively combines the complementary concepts of music and silence, not at the soundtrack level, but as an essential part and narrative axis of the story.”
“Variable Capital” (“Capital Variable”),Uruguay, Spain. Dir: Marco Caltieri Prod: Clara Charlo
High-powered executives travel to a weathered factory on a remote island for a seemingly innocuous business meeting. once there, the group is forced to face the outcomes of its harshest corporate policies as the victims touched by the practices close in on their comfort. The darkly comedic thriller seeks to “reflect the contrasts between the corporate world and the industrial world, exploring consequences of deindustrialization and how its effects have endured,” remarked Charlo.
“Delivery,”Chile, México, Dir: Diego Ayala Prod: Miguel Asensio Llamas
A delivery woman is separated from her son when strangers kidnap them after her shift. Desperate, she plots an escape and his rescue while slowly learning the sordid reasons for their captivity. Written by Ayala andAnibal Herrera, the narrative “reinvents the classic premise of kidnapping in Latin America and takes us into a dark, new world we’ve rarely seen on the big screen while giving voice to immigrants who work tirelessly as food delivery drivers,” said Ayala.
“Voracious” (“Voraces”), Spain, Dir: Daniel M. Caneiro Prod: Yolanda Ruiz Lara
Tony and Peter work abroad, moonlighting as fumbling grifters who steal money from powerful regional mafioso. once they’re found out, the pair flee to the mountains only to be met by an entrenched cannibal community.
