For the first time in its 56-year history, the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival—the world’s most prestigious showcase for horror and fantasy cinema—awarded its top prize to a film from Latin America: When Evil Lurks, directed by Argentine filmmaker Demián Rugna.

This historic win marks not only a breakthrough for regional genre filmmaking, but a powerful moment of recognition for the Global South’s cinematic voice in a space long dominated by North American and European productions.

Following its triumph at Sitges, the film has continued to make waves at Toronto, Los Angeles, and across streaming platforms. It is currently the most-watched film on Netflix Argentina, outperforming Hollywood blockbusters like Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, and ranks eighth globally on the platform—an extraordinary feat for a Spanish-language horror film rooted in rural mythologies and local trauma.

When Evil Lurks is a distinctly Latin American horror story, set in the Argentine countryside and steeped in folklore, oral traditions, and ancestral fears. It rejects the sanitized tropes of “elevated horror” and the religious iconography of Western possession films, opting instead for a brutal, unrelenting narrative centered on “el encarnado”—a grotesquely infected man whose condition signals the arrival of demonic forces.

“I wanted to make a film about exorcisms without exorcisms,” Rugna told La Nación. “No holy water, no crosses—just the raw terror of ancestral evil.”

This is horror that speaks from and to the Global South: its violence is not stylized but visceral, its setting not urban but rural and neglected, its themes not universalized but deeply local. It channels the literary cruelty of Horacio Quiroga, the social despair of post-crisis Argentina, and the genre instincts of a filmmaker who grew up watching 1980s VHS horror in a country where such cinema was rarely legitimized.

Rugna’s rise reflects the broader struggle of Latin American genre filmmakers to carve space in national industries often resistant to horror. From his early shorts and direct-to-DVD debut The Last Gateway (2007), to his breakout Terrified (Aterrados, 2017), Rugna has consistently pushed against the margins. When Evil Lurks is his most ambitious work yet—technically daring, narratively uncompromising, and culturally rooted.

“This is horror that doesn’t ask for permission,” wrote Cinergia Online. “It’s a genre film that restores balance to gore and splatter without relying on excess—it uses brutality as a narrative tool, not a gimmick.”

The film’s success at Sitges—where it was incubated through the Fanpitch program—represents a watershed moment for Global South genre cinema. It affirms that horror from Latin America is not just viable, but essential, offering perspectives and aesthetics that challenge the dominance of Western narratives and production models.

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