Official selection
Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival 2023
Celluloid Screams: Sheffield Horror Film Festival 2023
Morbido Film Fest 2023
Torino Film Festival 2023
Cinefantasy: International Fantastic Film Festival 2023
Honors
Best Actress for Belen Rueda - Cinefantasy: International Fantastic Film Festival 2023
Director
Carlota Pereda
Producer
Pablo Echart, Carlos Fernández, Laura Fernández Brites, Iñaki Gómez
Writer
Albert Bertran Bas, Carlota Pereda, Carmelo Viera
Cast
Josean Bengoetxea, Loreto Mauleón, Belén Rueda, Maia Zaitegi
contact
Filmax
Carol Peralta (THE ORPHANAGE's Belen Rueda) doesn't believe in ghosts. To her, the supernatural is all superstition, and she's got the scars to prove it. But bills must be paid and she knows how these things work so she's become a medium, telling those willing to believe anything that everything they believe is real. When Carol receives word that her mother—the person responsible for her disbelief—has died, it only brings the opportunity to sell off her mother's property and leave the small village she was raised in behind forever. However, her mother's passing coincides with the village's annual fall festival commemorating the opening of a sealed chapel said to be haunted by the spirit of a young girl whose ghost must be appeased with gifts for five days before the chapel is sealed up again. Into this unwanted distraction comes Emma (the extraordinary Maia Zaitegi), a little girl whose belief in the afterlife and a need to reach the chapel's inhabitant carries with it a possible redemption—or damnation—for them all.
Fantasia's early days coincided with the rise of Spanish horror on the international film scene, and it's our pleasure to report that THE CHAPEL marks a fantastic return of atmospheric supernatural Spanish horror to the festival. This one comes from Carlota Pereda, who knocked out Fantasia audiences in 2022 with her debut feature PIGGY, and proves herself again to be a major new genre film talent. THE CHAPEL may seem like a more traditional supernatural story, but Pereda and co-writers Albert Bertran Bas and Carmelo Viera flesh it out with several layers of real human pain and anguish, bought beautifully to life by Rueda and Zaitegi in two of the best performances you'll see all year. THE CHAPEL haunts its audience with a great tale of the supernatural, but it's the two women at its centre, and the terrific actors who bring them to life, that will stay with you long after you've left the theatre. – Matthew Kiernan
Showings
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