A Spanish occult chiller titled Lily’s Ritual has been picked up for international sales by Black Mandala and will receive its world premiere at Manchester’s Grimmfest this week, positioning the film to leverage a horror-centric launchpad before wider market play. A trade report on the deal notes the production’s emphasis on practical effects, estimating roughly 90% of the on-screen supernatural work was achieved with prosthetics and traditional techniques, a choice meant to echo late-’80s and ’90s genre textures.
Festival materials describe the feature as an initiation-gone-wrong: four friends retreat to a woodland house to complete a witchcraft rite tied to the four elements, only for Lily to realize she is the intended sacrifice in a rite invoking Lilith. Credits list writer-director Manuel Herrera Gallego, with Maggie Garcia, Elena Gallardo and Patricia Peñalver among the cast, pointing to a Spain-based package that pairs emerging performers with a stylized take on folk-horror iconography.
Grimmfest has slotted the film on its closing day, underscoring the festival’s penchant for capping the program with bold, filmmaker-forward titles. This year’s edition runs Oct. 9–12 at the Odeon Great Northern; programming includes an array of world and international premieres, with Lily’s Ritual sharing the Sunday spotlight alongside new indie offerings and post-screening talent appearances. That scheduling gives the project a late-festival burst of word-of-mouth as buyers and press cycle through the final daytime blocks.
Beyond premiere optics, the sales attachment signals a strategy that has worked for recent Spanish-language genre titles: build profile via a targeted festival berth, highlight craft decisions—in this case the practical FX pledge—and lean on mythology with global recognition to travel beyond local markets.
Black Mandala’s involvement aligns with its track record placing high-concept horror into niche distributors, while the Grimmfest bow offers immediate feedback from a UK audience with a reputation for supporting new voices in supernatural cinema. If early reception proves favorable, the film’s practical-effects calling card and Lilith-myth hook could help it secure additional playdates across midnight strands and regional genre events heading into 2026.
