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Barcelona-based sales company Film Factory has picked up global rights to Alberto Gastesi’s sci-fi thriller “Singular,” a former Sitges Pitchbox winner that will begin shooting this month.

“Singular” is the story of Diana, a university professor who works with artificial intelligence linguistic models. When Martín, Diana’s ex and the father of her late son Martín, invites her to spend a day at the lake, she’s shocked to meet a young man named Andrea, who undeniably resembles her deceased child. Given Martín’s expertise in robotics, Diana begins to suspect that the man has created an android version of their child. While every part of her wants to deny Andrea, she feels compelled to help free the boy from the prison-like grasp that Martín holds over him.

Spanish Academy Goya Award winners Patricia López Arnaiz (“20 000 Species of Bees”) and Javier Rey (“Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City...

The 22nd edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival kicked off Friday night in the city of Cluj-Napoca with the international premiere of Northern Comfort, a comedy directed by Icelandic filmmaker Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, and with a tribute to the film’s star, Timothy Spall.

The famed British character actor, known for his roles in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy and Mr. Turner, Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky, Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech and the Harry Potter films, received this year’s lifetime achievement award at the festival’s opening gala.

The Icelandic-uk-German co-production Northern Comfort is part of the massive Nordic Focus at the festival this year, with more than 40 films from Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, as well as live music performances and cine-concerts. Some of the Nordic highlights include Ruben Östlund’s 2022 Palm d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness, Lars von Trier...

The Romanian film festival runs June 9-18.

Transilvania International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its 22nd edition which takes place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

The official competition is made up of 12 features while the documentary strand, entitled What’s Up Doc?, will screen 10 titles. All of the films are from first and second-time directors.

Among the competition selection is Ion Bors’ Carbon which premiered in San Sebastian’s New Directors strand last year, having won the festival’s Wip Europa Industry and Wip Europa awards the previous year. The dark comedy, surrounding the Transnistrian conflict of the 1990s, is...

Two Basque movies screen in San Sebastian main competition, multiple others, from ever more notable and noted filmmakers, play other sections or grace Basque showcase Zinemira. A drilldown:

“Blue Files” (“Karpeta Urdinak”, Ander Iriarte, Spain-France)

Iriarte directs a doc investigating his father’s potential torture while in police custody. The investigations take the doc deeper into findings from Basque’s “Research project on torture and ill-treatment in the Basque Country between 1960-2014.” Produced by Gastibeltza, Filmak, and Iriarte’s own Mirokutana.

“Bi Arnas,” (Jon Mikel Fernandez Elorz, Spain)

A debut documentary from Basque journalist and teacher Elorz. Bi Arnas, meaning “two breaths,” features mother Maria Nieves Diaz and her daughter, Iratxe Sorzabal, who was a former head of Eta. It explores the alleged use of torture of Sorzabal by Spanish Police while in custody.

“Black is Beltza II: Ainhoa,” (Fermin Muguruza)

The sequel to Muguruza’s 2018 animated feature, following Ainhoa,...

Jabi Elortegi latest film Dear Grandma will open the Basque film strand.

Jabi Elortegi’s Dear Grandma will open the Zinemira strand of the 70th San Sebastian International Film Festival, which honours cinema produced in the Basque country.

Elortegi’s follow-up to his debut Perfect Happiness, which competed in Sab Sebastian’s 2009 New Directors selection, will have its world premiere at the festival. Barcelona-based Filmax acquired international rights to the comedy, which follows a man who moves to Argentina upon his uncle’s request and gets caught up in the village’s antics.

Scroll down for Zinemira line-up

The line-up...

Sitges, Spain — Spaniard Alberto Gastesi’s “Singular” snagged the big prize at the 5th Sitges Pitchbox, a horror-fantasy-sci-fi showcase taking place on Friday at the Sitges Intl. Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, which hosted the event in partnership with online marketplace Filmarket Hub.

Following in the footsteps of Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman, Vincenzo Natali godfathered the Sitges Pitchbox, delivering a heartfelt master class to the Pitchbox’s largely young filmmakers.

A feature debut, “Singular” was presented by director and co-screenwriter Gastessi and screenwriter Álex Merino.

Mixing sci-fi, drama, and thriller; it follows Diana– who is about to present a thesis on Artificial Intelligence– and Martin, her ex-boyfriend and father of their deceased son. Martin invites Diana to spend a weekend in his lake house and there appears Andrea, a young boy with a patent resemblance to deceased son. Diana suspects that Martin might have spent the last years...

Like Ron Perlman in 2018 and Guillermo del Toro the year before, Canadian writer-director Vincenzo Natali, whose new Netflix film, an adaption of Steven King’s “In the Tall Grass” will innaugurate October’s Sitges Film Festival, is lined up to open this year’s Sitges Pitchbox, organized in by Barcelona-based platform Filmarket Hub. The Sitges Pitchbox take place Oct 4.

One of Canada’s most prominent genre filmmakers, Natali hit the international scene running with 1997’s “Cube,” a bloody low-budget cult classic that broke records for a Canadian horror film and won best film at that year’s Sitges Festival. Herreturned to the main competition at the Catalan fest in 2002 with “Cypher,” and in 2010 directed Canada’s highest-grossing English-language film “Splice,” which starred Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley.

His extensive body of work includes turns on some of the most popular genre TV series of the last two decades as well,...