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Five of the 19 films selected are world premieres.

Films from Álvaro Longoria, Itsaso Arana and Gerardo Herrero are among the 19 features selected for the Made In Spain strand of San Sebastian International Film Festival, the non-competitive showcase of Spanish talent.

Longoria will close the strand with the world premiere of La Vida De Brianeitor about a teenager with a physical disability who becomes an elite gamer.

Also world premiering is Mercedes Moncada Rodríguez’s documentary Perplexed Ants exploring workers trying to prevent the collapse of their industry.

The other world premieres include Juanma Betancort’s documentary Seed Of Son about...

Swiss-Kosovar feature ‘The Land Within’ takes best first feature film.

Hilmar Oddsson’s Icelandic dark comedy Driving Mum won the Grand Prix for best film in Competition at the award ceremony of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), held on Saturday, November 26.

The Official Selection jury, headed by Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi, said Driving Mum “charmed us all with its transparent, simple but bold film language, with its graceful sense of humour, with its unpretentious way of speaking about burning questions of personal life. A film which tells us that it is never too late.”

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The tropes of an alien abduction — the UFO chasing the car, missing time, strange experiments, grey-skinned beings with large eyes — emerged primarily from two alleged experiences, the Betty and Barney Hill case in 1961, and Travis Walton’s in 1975. Beyond having an enormous influence on pop culture, these are the most famous so-called close encounters of the fourth kind.

They are also the most well-documented cases, according to UFO expert and former FBI special agent, Ben Hansen. And in two new discovery+ “Shock Docs,” Alien Abduction: Betty and Barney Hill and Alien Abduction: Travis Walton — debuting Feb. 18 on the streaming platform — Hansen walks audiences through the stories, and offers up new evidence that he believes corroborates the abductees’ claims. Likewise serving as consulting producer on the Shock Docs, Hansen, who is also currently filming the second season of UFO Witness for discovery+, joined Den of Geek’s paranormal pop culture...

This is the final installment in a five-part series examining the transformation of television as the industry prepares to celebrate the Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 19.

The rapid migration of TV viewers to streaming services and on-demand platforms has put added pressure on the need for transparent measurement standards at a time when Nielsen, the standard-bearer for TV ratings for decades, is under fire from the industry watchdog group Media Ratings Council.

Earlier this month, the MRC suspended its backing of Nielsen’s national ratings service, amid charges the service has not been counting TV viewers correctly during the coronavirus pandemic. No rival has emerged to take Nielsen’s place, though NBCUniversal is working on its own measurement system. NBCU and others are motivated to take extraordinary steps to address the measurement shortcomings in the expanding TV universe because of the fear that ad-supported networks are leaving money on the table with marketers.

History’s The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch features ongoing investigations into one of the country’s most mysterious locales.

The titular ranch allegedly experiences paranormal activity regularly from UFOs and cattle mutilations to incarnate voices and poltergeists…and sometimes several at the same time. Strange occurrences on the ranch have been the focus of several scientific investigations, including from a secretive program housed in the Pentagon. What is not as well known is that some investigators claim the paranormal phenomena follow them home. Brandon Fugal, the elusive owner of Skinwalker Ranch, spoke with Den of Geek about how what happens at Skinwalker Ranch doesn’t always stay there.

Fugal is a prominent businessman and real estate developer in Utah. He first heard about the Skinwalker Ranch at a local bookstore.

“The ranch was first brought to my attention when I was at Barnes & Noble, back in 2006, and saw Dr.

Crossovers are all the rage in the superhero genre, but Friday, Feb. 12 will be the crossover event of the year for the paranormal field.

Willam Shatner’s The UnXlplained and Ancient Aliens are combining forces to figure out the mysteries of the universe. Typically, Friday nights on the History Channel include Ancient Aliens, then an episode of The UnXplained. This Friday, however, History will join the shows together in a two-hour special. Shatner is joining Giorgio Tsoukalos and the Ancient Aliens crew for a special called “William Shatner Meets Ancient Aliens.”

Den of Geek was able to catch up with Shatner and get some insight into what to expect on Friday’s crossover event and his thoughts on UFOs and extraterrestrial life. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Den of Geek: What do you think of the ancient alien theory and the possibility that aliens have visited this planet before?...

A former CIA operative is teaming up with the family of the first Army officer on the scene of an alleged crash of an alien spacecraft near Roswell, to search for the truth in a new three-part investigation for History’s Greatest Mysteries.

On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field (Raaf) distributed a press release claiming they had recovered the remains of a “flying disc” crashed in the New Mexican desert outside of Roswell. The news made headlines, but the media’s enthusiasm was short-lived. The next day the US Army released a second statement claiming the recovered object was just a weather balloon.

The incident would have been lost to the dustbin of history had it not been for Jesse Marcel, a former intelligence officer stationed at Raaf in 1947. When a local rancher reported the debris’ discovery, Marcell was sent out to take a look and bring some of...

The annual International UFO Congress Conference and Film Festival (organized and Mc’ed by Den of Geek UFO contributor Alejandro Rojas) are happening virtually on September 8 to 13, 2020!

“As everyone knows by now, Covid-19 has made large gatherings ill advised if not prohibited. But don’t worry! You won’t miss out on meeting new friends or connecting with old ones. With our live-streaming platform, Whova, you can upload your picture and personal information, look for others, join chat rooms, create your own, host a virtual meetup, and even allow the app to match you with like-minded attendees if you choose.”

Click here tickets and more information.

Check out these fifty perfect movies—perfect according to Rotten Tomatoes scores, that is.

“If you’re envisioning a list comprising solely Citizen Kane, a few Charlie Chaplin comedies, and other longtime classics, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. There are movies in...

Daniel Myrick, the co-director and writer of the 1999 indie classic, The Blair Witch Project, has a new fictional documentary dealing with a subject he says he has a passion for, alien abduction. It’s called Skyman and it’s available on VOD and playing in drive-in theaters now.

“I’ve always been fascinated with the subject matter,” Myrick tells Den of Geek. “When I was growing up in the late seventies and early eighties, everything from UFOs to Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Bermuda Triangle, and the zeitgeists in those days, and sort of inspired me as a preteen to kind of start my own UFO club in my neighborhood. And me and a couple of friends got together and did sort of our version of The X-Files, where we were out investigating neighborhoods and people that had visitations and whatnot.”

Myrick says his interest in the UFOs can also be...

Alejandro Rojas Jan 30, 2020

Project Blue Book season 2 heads to Roswell and Area 51 with some unexpected twists and turns

Project Blue Book season 2 is underway, and according to the showrunner, is doing its version of The Joker by tackling the origin stories of some of the most famous UFO cases. As seen in the first episodes of the season, the infamous alleged crash of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 is the focus of the first arc of the season. Showrunner Sean Jablonski says this season will also feature Area 51.

UFO nerds, like me, will note that the real-life official Air Force UFO research program, Project Blue Book, did not investigate Area 51 or the Roswell UFO crash. However, Jablonski says they felt now that they had introduced their audience to the Project Blue Book program, next would be educating them on the origins of UFO conspiracies.

"We wanted to start...

Having conquered the global Svod market with large hits such as “La casa de papel” (“Money Heist”) and “Elite,” Spanish dramas continued gaining ground in 2019.

The international presence of Spanish fiction was driven by period dramas and thrillers, as its most demanded TV genres.

By territories, Mexico and the U.S. were the top destinies for Spanish TV shows.

These are some of the trends relating to the impact of Spanish TV content in the world, unveiled Tuesday by Alejandro Rojas, regional director at Parrot Analytics, at the 3rd Madrid TV Pitchbox pitching event.

With a variety of Internet data sources, Parrot has measured the demand for 100,000 TV shows across more than 200 platforms in 35 countries, listing over 100,000 titles.

The international reach of Spanish TV content still has a large room for growth. By past year’s last quarter, only 1.5% of all titles available on global catalogues were Spanish, in a...

Madrid – Barcelona-based platform Filmarket Hub has announced the selected projects for its Madrid TV Pitchbox, one in a series of international pitching sessions hosted by the service.

Seven series have been selected to participate on Jan. 14, each giving a seven-minute presentation to an audience of key companies in Spanish TV fiction. Confirmed attendees at this year’s Pitchbox include: Amazon Prime Video Spain, Viacom International Studios, Mediaset España, Movistar Plus, Rtve, The Mediapro Studio, Dynamo, DeAPlaneta, The Co-Producer, Mediacrest, Netshow Capital, Sequoia Contents and The Immigrant.

Following the pitches, participants and observers will attend a networking lunch, another staple of the TV Pitchbox events now held this year in London, Madrid, Sitges, Guadalajara and Mexico City.

Filmarket Hub has also announced that January’s showcase will host an opening talk given by Parrot Analytics director Alejandro Rojas, one of the leading analysts of audience for content in international markets.

This...

“Money Heist” is the most-watched non-English series in Netflix history. “The Plague” played on the BBC. “Side Games” was a big hit for DirecTV Latin America. Success can take many shapes. Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Chile figure as the regular top markets for Spanish TV fiction, though now, standout performances have extended across the U.S. market.

“In recent years, Spanish TV fiction has taken an impressive leap in quality, allowing it to expand to the rest of the world,” says Alejandro Rojas, regional director, Latin America at Parrot Analytics.

It’s also started to appear in other non-traditional markets such as Japan, Greece and Turkey. In the U.S., “Elite” Season 2, produced by Zeta Audiovisual for Netflix, multiplied its demand five times compared to 2018’s original; “Money Heist” Part 3 increased viewings 50% versus earlier installments, according to Parrot Analytics.

“Obviously U.S. productions always have an advantage: The audience prefers to consume content without dubbing,...

Alejandro Rojas Sep 20, 2019

We talk with UFO hunters Luis Elizondo and Sean Cahill from History's Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation about season 1.

Seasons one of History's Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation wrapped up on July 5th. UFO shows come and go, but what was unique about this one was the caliber of the investigators. Lead investigator Luis Elizondo formerly worked at the Pentagon, and one of his duties was to investigate UFOs as part of the Advanced Threat Identification Program (Aatip).

Now that Elizondo has left the Pentagon, he is working with former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge's To the Stars Academy. This organization is made up of several other highly credentialed individuals who investigate the UFO subject and are the focus on Unidentified. Two of his team members were former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon and former head of Advanced Systems Directorate for Lockheed Martin Steve Justice.

The Orville ends Season 2 with a swashbuckling homage to Star Wars.

This The Orville review contains spoilers.

The Orville Season 2 Episode 14

“The Road Not Taken” begins with two masked humanoids trying to steal a big ugly looking microwave type device. The Kaylon busts them. The two thieves run away and narrowly escape. It turns out the thieves are Ed and Gordon and the microwave device is a replicator. Ed and Gordon then replicate a Twinkie. While they are enjoying the Twinkie, they are captured by a space scavenger. That space scavenger? None other than Commander Kelly Grayson.

One thing I left out in my last review was that at episode’s end, the younger version of Kelly Grayson, who came from seven years in the past into The Orville present, didn’t lose her memory when she went back to the past. She was supposed to not remember she went...

Alejandro Rojas May 15, 2019

New revelations shed light on secret government investigations in History's Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

At the end of 2017, The New York Times broke the story of a secretive Pentagon program with a budget of $22 million to investigate UFOs called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (Aatip). The man who exposed the existence of the program, Luis Elizondo, was the former head of the project. Elizondo’s ongoing efforts to investigate the UFO mystery with his new employer, the To the Stars Academy (Ttsa), will be featured in a History Channel series premiering May 31 called Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

However, what The New York Times apparently did not know when they published their story is that the program went by a different name at its inception, and the scope of the program was much broader than just UFOs. In fact, according to a senior manager on the project,...

Alejandro Rojas Oct 5, 2018

Science Fair filmmakers, Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, discuss what it means to be a science fair kid.

The new documentary Science Fair follows several high school students on their journey to being accepted and competing in the world’s largest pre-college science competition. Their projects include groundbreaking science, yet these young scientists do not have advanced degrees and are just as silly and full of nerves and hormones as any other high school teenager. All of which turns out to be hilarious, educational, awkward, inspiring, and highly entertaining to watch play out on the big screen.

Filmmaker Cristina Costantini describes the International Science and Engineering Fair (Isef) as “one of the most stressful, exhilarating, sublime, terrible experiences a young person could go through.”

She would know, she competed in the fair when she was a student.

“I was a science fair kid when I was in...

Alejandro Rojas Oct 2, 2018

Which company will be the first to get the U.S. back into the human spaceflight business?

Illustration by Jessica Koynock

The United States’ contract with Russia to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station (Iss) will be ending soon, and if the U.S. wants to continue to have a presence on the space station, that means they need to find a new means to get there. Through Nasa’s Commercial Crew Program, two spacecraft in development have been chosen to meet this task, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and the Boeing Crew Space Transport (Cst)-100 Starliner. The race is now on to see who will get astronauts to the Iss first, and although the conventional wisdom was that the more experienced Boeing had the inside track, currently it is SpaceX that is scheduled to be the first private company to send Nasa astronauts into space.