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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Lisa O’CONNOR \/ AFP, Gareth Cattermole, Stephanie Augello\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe American Film Market\u2019s 47th edition, taking place Nov. 10-15 at the Fairmont Century Plaza, AMC Century City and The Pavilion in Los Angeles, arrives at a moment of near-total disruption for the independent film business. The models that have long underpinned financing, production and distribution are in flux, squeezed by consolidation, changing audience habits and a market in which the traditional routes to getting a film made and seen are no longer a given.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut the upheaval is also opening doors. A new generation of online creators-turned-filmmakers \u2014 Curry \u201cObsession\u201d Barker, Kane \u201cBackrooms\u201d Parson and Mark \u201cIron Lung\u201d Fischbach among them \u2014 is proving that audiences can be built outside the traditional system and carried onto screens.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cOddly, every independent success is still seen as a fluke, or gets put in a bucket,\u201d says Jackie Brenneman, the new head of IFTA, which runs AFM. \u201cWhat\u2019s not being seen is that almost none of these films should have happened, because the structure of the business doesn\u2019t support independent film. That they\u2019ve broken through the way they have is just the tip of the iceberg of demand. Once we build the infrastructure to connect audiences with the stories they want across all different screens, the numbers are going to be much bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThat sense of untapped demand is echoed by international sellers, some of whom are returning to the market after time away. Among them is South Korea\u2019s Finecut, back at AFM after several years with the animated feature Long Long Night, from Korean director Kyu Bock Youm, which follows a rhino and a penguin as they journey across the wilderness together. \u201cAs one of the last markets of the year, AFM is an important opportunity to introduce titles launched after Cannes to buyers, particularly for North and Latin America,\u201d says Finecut sales manager JD Kim. \u201cConsidering the trajectory from Parasite to K-Pop Demon Hunters, I believe global interest in Korean culture and content remains strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tTHR\u2019s 2026 Hot List of the titles generating buzz at AFM spans star-led packages, international genre plays, animation, prestige dramas and films at various stages of production. The common thread is a search for projects \u2014 and business models \u2014 that can find their audience in a rapidly changing independent landscape.<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Almost You\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Lisa O’CONNOR \/ AFP, Gareth Cattermole, Stephanie Augello\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tAlmost You<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Matt Lipsey<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Juno Temple, Joey King, James McAvoy<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ AI and grief collide in this high-concept tale about a robotics engineer mourning her younger sister, who feeds years of messages, videos and social media posts into an AI replica of her. The invention brings comfort \u2014 at first \u2014 before forcing her to confront a thorny question: if you could bring someone back, should you? A trio of Temple, King and McAvoy gives the timely premise some marquee value for buyers.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES Bankside Films, UTA<\/p>\n
\t\u2018A Speck in the Sea\u2018<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Daniele Venturelli\/WireImage, Katie FLORES \/ AFP\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tA Speck in the Sea<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Orlando Von Einsiedel<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ Oscar-winning documentarian Von Einsiedel (The White Helmets) makes his fiction debut with this based-on-a-true survival tale of Johnny Aldridge (Brolin), a Montauk lobster fisherman who falls off his fishing boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the dead of night, with his best friend Anthony Sosinski (Renner), asleep below deck.<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Breakwater\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Daniele Venturelli, Mike Marsland\/WireImage\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tBreakwater<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Luc Walpoth<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Olga Kurylenko, Alex Pettyfer<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ Action thrillers are a go-to at any AFM, which bodes well for this neo-noir project, about a woman trapped in a toxic marriage (Kurylenko) whose plan to blackmail her rich sadistic husband (Pettyfer) goes horribly wrong, landing her and her accomplice in a fight for survival on the high seas.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES WestEnd Films<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Control\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Stefania D’Alessandro, Gareth Cattermole\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tControl<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Robert Schwentke<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS James McAvoy, Julianne Moore<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ One of the higher-profile star-driven actioners on offer at AFM, this feature, from the director of Red, features McAvoy as a man who wakes up one morning with an untraceable device planted in his head and must follow a mysterious voice\u2019s instructions or devastating consequences.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES Studiocanal<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Darlington\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Gareth Cattermole, Dia Dipasupil, Manoli Figetakis\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tDarlington<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Sascha Gervasi<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Ren\u00e9e Zellweger, Dominic Sessa, Peter Dinklage<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ Zellweger plays a faded television actress invited to reprise her most famous role \u2014 only this time in the real world. Her host (Sessa) is a reclusive tech billionaire who has restored an English country estate and lives there as if it were 1923. As she settles into his carefully controlled fantasy, the line between illusion and reality starts to blur. Alexander Payne is on board as executive producer, which should add some cachet to the package.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES Rocket Science, CAA<\/p>\n
\t\u2018The Face of Horror\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Paul Archuleta, Aurore Marechal\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Face of Horror<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Anna Biller<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Jonah Hauer-King, Kristine Froseth, Leo Suter<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ Biller\u2019s gothic horror takes its cue from Yotsuya Kaidan, Japan\u2019s most famous ghost story and a cornerstone of Japanese horror, adapted more than 30 times, including by Takashi Miike as Over Your Dead Body in 2014. Set amid war and plague, the story follows a knight who kills a landowner, marries his daughter and vows to avenge the very crime he committed. When he betrays her, his wife returns from the grave to exact revenge, drawing his squire and her sister into the supernatural reckoning.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES Embankment Films<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Falcon\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of @DR\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFalcon<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Marco Bellocchio<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Pierfrancesco Favino, Louis Garrel, Benedetta Cimatti, Barbara Ronchi, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ Bellocchio turns his lens on the boardroom with this drama about Sergio Marchionne (Favino) and his bid to rescue Fiat from the brink of collapse. Framed as a financial thriller with a psychological edge, the film tracks Marchionne\u2019s battles with General Motors and Chrysler and his mentorship of heir John Elkann (Garrel), while counting the personal cost of saving an industrial empire.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES Rai Cinema International Distribution<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Feed\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of Getty\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFeed<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Leslye Headland
STAR Rosamund Pike<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ This new project, which Pike will also produce, could provide an injection of socially-conscious body horror in the vein of The Substance for indie buyers. Inspired by 2022 Finnish feature Hatching, it stars Pike as a Muminfluencer desperate to make her gymnast daughter an online sensation. But when she turns to a suspicious supplement to help her along, monstrous things begin to happen.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES The Veterans, CAA Media Finance<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Found Alive\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: XYZ Films\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFound Alive<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Carlota Pereda<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz, Rupert Friend<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ Genre buyers get a festival-tested option here: the thriller opened the 2026 Sitges Film Festival ahead of its AFM outing. Ten years after escaping a sadistic captor, a young woman agrees to mentor a newly rescued survivor. When the girl\u2019s story points to other missing victims, she is drawn into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. The English-language debut of Piggy director Pereda is adapted from Carla Norton\u2019s Edge of Normal book series.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES XYZ Films; CAA Media Finance, XYZ Films<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Get Rid of It\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Tiffany Rose, Lionel Hahn, Brianna Bryson\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tGet Rid of It<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Ry Russo-Young<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Daisy Ridley, Sosie Bacon, Simon Rex<\/p>\n
\n\tBUZZ A one-night stand leaves Harper with something unexpected growing inside her in this horror thriller, which sends her and her estranged sister on a desperate search for medical help. With the man from the encounter, religious fanatics and, eventually, the FBI all in pursuit, the sisters must confront both the creature and the wounds that drove them apart. The film is scheduled to shoot in February 2027.<\/p>\n
\n\tSALES Upgrade, CAA Media Finance, Range Select<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Gods Don\u2019t Give Gifts\u2019<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: AGC Marketing\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tGods Don\u2019t Give Gifts<\/p>\n
\n\tDIRECTOR Zack London<\/p>\n
\n\tSTARS Richard Cotton, Sam Dale, Ben Kersley<\/p>\n