Fresh directorial voices and big names — including Carlota Pereda, Isaki Lacuesta and Belen Funes — bring a sizzling slate for 2027, ranging from poignant family dramas to political thrillers and serial‑killer horrors.
The Bind (in development)
Dir. Alejandro Rojas
Following his well-received debut Upon Entry, co-directed with Juan Sebastian Vasquez, Alejandro Rojas is now developing The Bind (El Vínculo), a drama with thriller elements that will shoot in the second half of 2027. Barcelona’s Zabriskie Films and Belgium’s Wrong Men are producing.
The story revolves around two women: Venezuelan university lecturer Ana, who seeks to escape a life scarred by violence through asylum in Brussels alongside her teenage daughter, and public servant Léa, who is in charge of Ana’s case.
Rojas again works with Zabriskie Films’ Carles Torras, producer of Upon Entry which starred Alberto Ammann and Bruna Cusi as a couple being interrogated at US border control. It premiered at Tallinn Black Nights in 2022, winning the Fipresci prize, before an impressive festival run and a slew of international sales. Upon Entry also received three nominations at the Film Independent Spirit Awards in 2024, for best first feature, first screenplay and editing — a first for a Spanish production.
Contact: Zabriskie Films
Close To Me (in production)
Dir. Isaki Lacuesta
Isaki Lacuesta’s feature documentary Flamenco Sketches screens this year in San Sebastian’s Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section, and the two-time Golden Shell winner is already in post-production on his next release. Close To Me is set in the 1980s and follows two friends growing up in a small Catalan town. It is inspired by Lacuesta’s real‑life experience as a teenager, which has haunted him ever since.
The story centres on Ivan, whose life is thrown into turmoil when his best friend Jan disappears. He discovers Jan’s hiding place and the pair enjoy a brief sense of freedom, before a traumatic event brings dark truths to the surface.
The film is produced by the Oscar-nominated team behind 2023’s Society Of The Snow: director JA Bayona and producers Belen Atienza and Sandra Hermida alongside Belgium’s Benoit Roland. The cast includes Sergi Lopez, Alex Brendemühl and Alba Guilera. BTeam Pictures will distribute theatrically in Spain in early 2027.
Contact: Lorenzo Bellassai, Global Constellation
Domani (post-production)
Dir. Santos Bacana
Alvaro Santos, working under his professional name Santos Bacana, premiered feature documentary This Excessive Ambition (Esta Ambición Desmedida), about musician C Tangana, at San Sebastian in 2023; it went on to be nominated for best documentary at the Goya Awards. Bacana now makes his fiction feature debut with Domani, produced by Little Spain, Elastica Films and Movistar Plus.
The thriller is about a man returning from the US to attend a traffic-accident court case in Madrid, as he confronts his past over a frantic 24 hours. The cast includes Saturn Return’s Daniel Ibañez and Milena Smit, whose credits include Pedro Almodovar’s Bitter Christmas and Parallel Mothers.
The screenplay is by Bacana, Eduard Sola (best known for Querer and A House On Fire) and Clara Roquet, who made her feature-directing debut with the award-winning Libertad in 2021.
Contact: Elastica Films
Found Alive (post‑production)
Dir. Carlota Pereda
Found Alive (formerly The Edge Of Normal) is the first English-language feature by Carlota Pereda, whose slasher debut Piggy premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2022.
Now in post-production in Spain after filming in Utah, this serial killer thriller stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a woman haunted by the traumatic past experience as a teenager of being held captive by a sadist. When a psychiatrist (Rupert Friend) asks her to mentor a young girl who suffered a similar fate, she risks being dragged back into the nightmare from which she has barely escaped.
The screenplay is by Matt Venne and Lori Evans Taylor, based on Carla Norton’s novel of the same name. Producers are XYZ Films, Vanishing Angle, Andrew Deane and Ava Jamshidi for Industry Entertainment, with Adrian Guerra’s Nostromo Pictures in Spain.
Contact: XYZ Films
Léa Y Mikel (in development)
Dir. Belen Funes
BTeam Prods and Buena Pinta Media, the team behind Golden Shell 2025 winner Sundays (Los Domingos), are reteaming for Belen Funes’ next drama. Léa Y Mikel is the story of a couple in prison who request a transfer to the family wing, where parents can live together and raise their child until the age of three.
Funes’ debut feature A Thief’s Daughter screened in competition at San Sebastian in 2019, winning the best actress award for Greta Fernandez. Sophomore feature The Exiles premiered at Toronto in 2024 before travelling to San Sebastian the following year.
The screenplay for Léa Y Mikel is written by Funes and Pilar Palomero, who made her feature-directing debut with award winner Schoolgirls in 2020 and whose Motherhood (2022) and Glimmers (2024) both screened in competition at San Sebastian. The project hopes to shoot in the second half of 2027.
Contact: BTeam Pictures
March 14th (post-production)
Dir. Alberto Gross Molo
This family drama tells the story of young siblings who share a final day together as a family before their parents’ divorce. Each has to decide if they will live with their mother or father.
March 14th is inspired by the real‑life experience of director Alberto Gross Molo, who wrote the screenplay with Tomas Bayo Encontra. This feature-directing debut was developed through the Berlinale Talents Script Station and won the VFF Talent Highlight award at the Berlinale Co-Production Market in 2025.
Spain’s Contraria Media, Ayhe Productions and Solita Films are producing with Les Films du Carré and Saga Film in Belgium and M-Films in Lithuania.
Contact: Contraria Media
Memorial (in production)
Dir. Sergi Perez
Sirât star Sergi Lopez leads the cast of Memorial, the second feature by Catalan director Sergi Perez. Edna Cinema, Susmendi Filmak and BTeam Prods in Spain are producing with Belgium’s Scope Pictures and France’s Noodles Production. BTeam’s theatrical arm will release in Spain.
Lopez stars as a curator at the Prado Museum in Madrid, mourning the death of his husband who worked as an art restorer. He is asked to supervise the transport of a Rubens painting to Belgium, all while his daughter (played by Iria del Rio) uncovers family secrets back at home.
Perez’s debut feature The Long Way Home, starring Borja Espinosa, won best picture at the Catalan Film Academy awards in 2016.
Contact: BTeam Pictures
Mother Of Sugar (post‑production)
Dir. Claudia Cedo Castillo
Producer Lastor Media is renowned for supporting rising talents, having worked with Carla Simón (Alcarràs) and Elena Martin Gimeno (Creatura). Next up is Claudia Cedo Castillo with Mother Of Sugar (Mare De Sucre), which first impressed as a stage play. Lastor produced Cedo Castillo’s short film based on the play, and has now made the feature version.
Mother Of Sugar is about a 30-year-old woman with an intellectual disability who wants to become a mother, a desire that clashes with the opinions of those closest to her. It stars Andrea Alvarez and Maria Rodriguez Soto, who were both involved in the original stage play. Suica Films and Deliris Films are co-producing.
Contact: Lastor Media
Petroleo (post-production)
Dir. Alvaro F Pulpeiro
Shot in Colombia and Spain, Petroleo is the fiction feature debut of Galician filmmaker Alvaro F Pulpeiro. It is produced by Xavi Font’s ZuZú Cinema and Andrea Vazquez’s Miramemira, with Julien Naveau’s Le Plein de Super in France and Laura C Solano’s Estrata in Colombia.
Petroleo tells the story of Juan, a European engineer who arrives in a collapsing South American petro-state to oversee an oil operation. He is drawn ever deeper into a web of corruption, foreign interests and moral compromise, and is forced to confront the human cost of fossil fuel extraction.
A Contracorriente Films handles theatrical distribution in Spain. International sales are by Canada’s Verità Films, which represented Pulpeiro’s previous film So Foul A Sky (2021), an experimental documentary about Venezuela’s oil industry.
Contact: Verità Films
Serenade (post-production)
Dir. Pedro Diaz
Set in a rural valley in Galicia, northern Spain in the late 1990s, Serenade (Un Dios Que No Baila) explores different concepts of family as well as the power of the Catholic church within the community, through three generations of women.
The story revolves around an atheist single mother who wants to fulfil her dying mother’s wish of seeing her granddaughter make her First Communion. The plan stirs deep emotional and moral tensions as 12-year-old Lola has not visited a church since her baptism. Meanwhile, a young nun arrives in the village. Maria Vazquez, Bruna Cusi and Ana Santos star.
Serenade marks the feature debut of Pedro Diaz, who received a Goya nomination in 2022 for his short film La Entrega. Sound design is by Amanda Villavieja, Oscar-nominated this year for her work on Sirât.
Serenade is a collaboration between Spain’s Mandragora Cinema, Salon Indien Films, Matriuska Producciones and Nu Boyana Portugal. Sideral Cinema handles international sales and Spanish distribution.
Contact: Sideral Cinema
Snow Country (in development)
Dir. Victor Iriarte
Spain’s Inicia Films and France’s 4A4 Productions are behind Victor Iriarte’s second feature Snow Country and are looking for partners in Uruguay and Japan, where the story is set.
The drama explores themes of migration and identity, centring on a Japanese farming family living outside Montevideo. Johnny, 23, wants to escape tradition and build a future with his girlfriend, while 14-year-old sister Kaneko embraces their heritage through grandmother Yoshiko, a former benshi (narrator of silent films). The economic crisis and his father’s health problems push Johnny to leave for Japan.
Snow Country won Screen International’s ECAM Forum Award 2026 in Madrid, which recognises a project from the event’s Films To Come strand that has strong international co-production and festival potential.
Iriarte’s debut feature Foremost By Night premiered in Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori in 2023 and screened at festivals including London and Thessaloniki.
Contact: Inicia Films
Three Ages (in production)
Dir. Jiajie Yu Yan
A family drama across three different moments in time is the setting of Three Ages (Tres Edades), the feature film debut of Jiajie Yu Yan, whose own life inspired the story. It tells of a seven-year-old Chinese boy, arriving in Barcelona in 1992 to reunite with his parents, who emigrated to Spain when he was a baby.
Now in production, Three Ages is produced by Jose Esteban Alenda at Solita Films with Coming Soon Films and Zeta Cinema in Spain, alongside Volos Films Italia and Belgium’s Saga Films. Three Ages was supported by Eurimages during its development and was one the winners of TorinoFilmLab’s production awards last November.
Jiajie, a Screen International Spain Star of Tomorrow in 2021, says that part of the motivation behind this project was “the absence of references in Spanish fiction that go beyond the clichés and stereotypes about Chinese culture”.
Contact: Solita Films
No comments yet