Italian filmmaker Dario Argento offered his new thriller trilogy on the Marché du Film‘s Fantastic Pavilion in Cannes, where he was also honored with the genre hub’s Keys to the Pavilion award.
The famed maestro of giallo cinema, who’s attending the pageant for the Cannes Classics screening of Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s 1968 drama “Love Circle,” which he co-penned, offered the three new initiatives with director Gabriele Altobelli and producer Giovanni Di Gianfrancesco of Rome-based Mattia’s Movie.
‘Flesh of My Flesh’ (‘Carne della mia Carne’)
Mattia’s Movie
The occasion screened the primary footage of “Flesh of My Flesh” (“Carne della mia Carne”), which Altobelli is at the moment capturing close to Rome. It tells the story of three moms investigating the disappearance of a teenage woman, described as “a realistic and unsparing portrait of evil in its most unsettling form: everyday, unsuspected, the evil next door” and a “deliberate departure from Argento’s signature atmospheric horror” that “marks a new register for the maestro’s storytelling.”
The second screenplay, “The Girl with Crystal Eyes” (“La bambina dagli occhi di cristallo”), follows the encounter between a captivating businessman and a mysterious girl whose ardour drags him right into a spiral of tragic murders. Manufacturing is ready to start in autumn 2026, with Argento overseeing inventive supervision of the venture.
The third movie, “The Black Velvet Mask” (“La maschera di velluto nero”), scheduled for manufacturing in 2027, explores the minds of three younger ladies from completely different social backgrounds and origins, united by the identical nightmare: a person in a black velvet masks assaults them and throws them from a balcony. The victims handle to unmask him — however once they wake, they can’t bear in mind his face.
The trilogy will might be produced throughout a number of European nations in Italian, English and Spanish.
Born from the collaboration between Argento and producer Di Gianfrancesco, the three-film slate is produced by Argento and Mattia’s Movie with Neo Artwork dealing with worldwide gross sales.
Accepting the Keys to the Pavilion award, which acknowledges folks whose physique of labor has formed the worldwide trajectory of style cinema, Argento addressed the worldwide style neighborhood: “I greet the wonderful fantastic audience that often follows me wherever I go. Thank you to the organization of the Fantastic Pavilion for this beautiful award, this key. I am very proud to receive it.”
Thought-about the architect of giallo cinema and one of the vital influential filmmakers within the historical past of horror, the Italian maestro has directed such movies as “Suspiria,” “Deep Red,” “Tenebrae” and “Opera.” He additionally co-wrote Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
“Hosting Dario Argento at the Fantastic Pavilion and handing him the Keys is an honor that few moments in our short history can match,” mentioned Pablo Guisa Koestinger, govt director of the Unbelievable Pavilion. “Beyond the recognition itself, what matters to us is that the maestro is still active, still producing, still translating his ideas onto the big screen. Being the platform that announces this to the world and to the fantastic community is exactly what the Pavilion was built to do.”
Throughout its 2026 version the hub has additionally offered Keys to the Pavilion to French filmmaker Xavier Gens and to Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, who’s in Cannes with “Her Private Hell” within the pageant’s official choice. Previous recipients of the award embody composer Simon Boswell and administrators David Cronenberg, Eli Roth, Álex de la Iglesia and J.A. Bayona.
