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Argentine filmmaker Fabián Forte has a directing career that stretches back more than twenty years, with his credits including Mala carne, La corporación, Socios por accidente, Socios por accidente 2, Dead Man Tells His Own Tale, Cantantes en Guerra, Legions, which was described as being “an unabashed love letter to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series,” and segments of the anthology films Retratos del Apocalipsis and Cursed Bastards. His most recent feature is The Witch Game, a horror film that drew inspiration from the Harry Potter franchise – and Variety reports that the film is securing distribution deals around the world.

Miracle Media will be releasing The Witch Game in North America and the U.K. sometime in the first quarter of 2025. The film has also landed distribution deals in Latin America (Encripta), Germany and Austria (Lighthouse Entertainment), Spain (Wild Duck), Portugal (Cinema Novo), Serbia (Fox Vision), and Cambodia (Westec).

The movie...

U.K. genre specialist distributor has sold “The Witch Game,” an Argentine “Harry Potter” inspired horror feature from director Fabian Forte, to Miracle Media in North America and the U.K. The supernatural thriller will be released in the territories in the first quarter of 2025.

Originally shot in Spanish, the film also has an English-language dubbed version, which was created using artificial intelligence technology.

In the film, Lourdes Mansilla stars as a rebellious teenage girl whose family is besieged by the devil himself. On her 18th birthday, the girl receives a state-of-the-art VR video game headset that allows her to travel into an occult world and a medieval school of magic where she can learn the ways of witchcraft to save her family from the lord of the underworld.

Written and directed by Forte, an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker whose credits include “Mala carne,” “Retratos del Apocalipsis” and the Argentine...

In what has become a regular event at major film festivals since January, members of the Argentine film community and its supporters from across the world, came together for a protest led by the San Sebastian Film Festival in support of the South American country’s flailing audiovisual industry.

The protests have been in response to the draconian measures taken by its right-wing government, led by Javier Milei, who took over as president in December last year amid a galloping 200% inflation rate.

Soon after he took over, Milei’s administration defunded the country’s film-tv institute Incaa, which adversely impacted its national film festivals such as the Mar del Plata and federal aid for national film releases, state-run cinemas and film schools, among others. It also jeopardized the prominent Buenos Aires-based film and TV market, Ventana Sur, jointly organized by Incaa and Cannes’ Marché du Film, that will take place this year in Montevideo,...

The Argentina pavilion may be absent from the Cannes Croisette this year amid an ongoing national funding crisis, yet the head of the country’s film academy remained unbowed, declaring, “We are here for our industry.”

Academy president Hernán Findling said, “The Academy will defend and promote Argentinian cinema. We have a long tradition and we’re doing whatever we can to share how important our national industry is.”

Referring to the suspension of public film body Incaa, Academy vice president Sabrina Farji said, “We’re very worried because we don’t know how many films there will be here next year.

Argentina’s right-wing populist president Javier Milei is forging ahead with his administration’s plans to defund the country’s film-tv institute Incaa, which will adversely impact national film festivals such as the Mar del Plata and federal aid for national film releases, state-run cinemas and film schools, among others. It also jeopardizes the prominent Buenos Aires-based film and TV market, Ventana Sur, which is jointly organized by Incaa and Cannes’ Marché du Film.

A March 11 communiqué from Argentina’s Orwellian-sounding Ministry of Human Capital stated that the Culture Ministry had discovered a deficit of $4 million dollars at Incaa and therefore has resolved to dramatically cut the institute’s expenses, “suspending transfers to the provinces, international travel, funding for festivals, payment of overtime, hiring of mobile telephony, per diems, and other expenses.”

“Furthermore, with the aim of reducing the $8 million allocated to staff salaries, no contract for work leases expiring...

Artsploitation Films, a division of Kino Lorber, has unleashed to the unsuspecting public Virtual Reality (Realidad Virtual) a blood-spurting slasher film from Argentina.

Death and destruction reign down on a horror film’s cast and crew when murderous characters from the movie come alive. An indie film director schemes with his shady producer to make their recently completed movie a hit with the help of a mysterious artificial intelligence file. He invites his cast and crew to his house but what begins as a celebratory screening of the final cut quickly turns to a bloodbath when the movie characters, including a sword-wielding, violence-loving Celtic knight come alive and begin to exact their revenge on the innocents. A violent, often gruesome movie-within-a movie mind-fuck slasher tale from Hernan Findling

The film is currently available on Blu-ray and VOD.

Blu-ray available at:

Amazon

Kino Lorber

Watch on VOD:

Amazon Prime

Kino Now...

Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to horror pic Virtual Reality from Argentine director-producer Hernán Findling (Impossible Crimes), Variety says. The film follows a cast and crew arriving at their director’s house for their film’s first cut screening. They soon find out that he has struck a sinister pact to ensure his career […]

The post ‘Virtual Reality’ Test Screening Turns Bloody [Image] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

New York-based Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to horror pic “Virtual Reality,” from Argentine director-producer Hernán Findling (“Impossible Crimes”).

Other deals on the pic closed by FilmSharks include Media 4 Fun (Poland), Av Jet (Taiwan) and Laon-i (South Korea). Japan, Latin America, the U.K. and France are under discussion.

“Just a few horror stories attain such a high degree of talent in merging so many different stories within the same feature, incorporating well-known genre cinema classics to make an absolutely new feature. This small-budgeted film has surprised everyone,” FilmSharks CEO, Guido Rud told Variety.

Starring Vanesa González, César Bordón, Christian Sancho and Federico Bal, “Virtual Reality” has screened at Sitges and Bifan. In it, a cast and crew arrive at their director’s house for their film’s first cut screening. They soon find out that he has struck a sinister pact to ensure his career really takes off.

Blood Window, Ventana Sur’s Latin American horror and fantasy film platform, returns to the Cannes Film Market this year with a selection of works in progress and completed films, including titles from Brazil and Mexico.

This year’s Blood Window Showcase screens Brazilian director Sabrina Greve’s film debut — still a work in progress — “The Basement of Scream Street” (“O porão da rua do grito”). The pic won Blood Window’s best work-in-progress competition at Ventana Sur last year, an honor that also granted it a world premiere at this year’s Sitges Film Festival in Spain.

“The Basement of Scream Street” centers on siblings Jonas and Rebeca, who, haunted by guilt over their parents’ death, have developed an obsessive dependency on each other as they care for their grandmother and a child trapped in the basement. Coração da Selva is handling sales for the film.

Likewise unspooling in...

Ventana Sur takes place from December 2-6.

The Méliès International Festivals Federation (formerly known as European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation) and Blood Window have announced the contenders for best Latin American feature film of the year at the upcoming Ventana Sur sidebar in Buenos Aires.

Vying for the prize will be Alejandro Landes’ Colombian international feature film Oscar contender Monos, as well as Kleber Mendonça Filho’s highly regarded Brazilian film and Cannes selection Bacurau. Ten features in total are in consideration for the honour, now in its third year.

“The Méliès International Festivals Federation is excited to continue its...

Stars: Daniel Alvaredo, Federico Bal, Guido D’Albo, Sofía Del Tuffo, Gustavo Pardi, Carla Quevedo, Marcelo Sein | Written by Nora Leticia Sarti | Directed by Hernán Findling

Directed by Hernan Findling, this Argentinian thriller has an intriguing set-up in its central idea of a detective tasked with solving impossible crimes. However, it quickly becomes clear that the film has precisely zero interest in solving said crimes, instead choosing to tell a painfully over-familiar story that most viewers will guess immediately.

The story centres on Lorenzo Brandoni (Federico Bal), a detective who appears to be the world’s unluckiest man. First, he loses his sister to cancer, and then he crashes his car on the motorway, killing his wife and child. To escape his pain, he throws himself into investigating a series of impossible crimes, such as a woman who’s apparently drowned in a closet. Then a young nun (Sofia del...

Lionsgate Home Entertainment sent Fango the cover art (see it below) for its DVD of Train, which we initially reported on here. Starring Thora Birch (pictured) and written/directed by Gideon Raff, the movie, in which a college wrestling team is butchered while traveling on an Eastern European train, arrives November 17. See our Raff interview in Fango #288, on sale in October.

IFC Films and Mpi Home Video sent along info and covers for a quartet of genre titles they’re jointly releasing in October. Streeting Oct. 13 are The Objective, the paranormal thriller centering on a group of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, directed and co-written by The Blair Witch Project’s Daniel Myrick (see our review here), and Left Bank, an acclaimed occult chiller by Belgian director Pieter Van Hees about a young woman encountering frightening phenomena after moving into her boyfriend’s apartment. Coming Oct. 27 are Sauna, a Finnish...