Skincrawl Studios will present a teaser trailer for the supernatural horror flick The Divine Comedy, directed by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Valladares (Invoking Scream, recently screened at London's FrightFest), to international buyers at next month's American Film Market and the Berlinale's European Film Market early next year. The film offers a modern reinterpretation of Dante's Inferno. The Irish production and distribution company, which specialises in horror and genre films, is handling international sales for the movie, which recently wrapped shooting.

The Divine Comedy is a co-production between Italy's Anxur Films and Skincrawl Limited. Alessandro Gatto is producing for Anxur, while Corrado Camilla and producer-screenwriter Loris Curci are producing on behalf of Skincrawl. The cast includes Norwegian actor Christopher Rygh, who starred in The Head Hunter and is known for the TV series Vikings: Valhalla, alongside British thesp Matthew Metcalfe (Spiders on a Plane, Sunfall), Finland's Tilda Metsola (Interpreting Love) and London-based Singaporean actress Fadhillah Othman (the Netflix series Bridgerton).

Valladares' film is a contemporary reinterpretation of the 14th-century poem by Dante Alighieri, which depicts a journey through Hell. Loris Curci co-wrote Skincrawl Studios' recent thriller The Sarajevo Murders with Barry Keating and directed the company's upcoming film Island of the Minotaur, currently in post-production. He previously worked with Valladares on the 2017 horror flick Nightworld. His screenplay for The Divine Comedy follows a writer named Dante who descends into the realm of the dead in an attempt to bring his deceased wife, Beatrice, back to life. Guided by Virgil, a former priest, he journeys through increasingly nightmarish circles of Hell, confronting supernatural entities, and manifestations of guilt, desire and suffering.

Curci told Variety that the main challenge was translating Dante's material into images, focusing particularly on the relationship between the two protagonists on their journey and introducing a new interpretation of the character of Beatrice. The screenplay also draws on Greek and Roman mythology, a source of inspiration that Dante himself had used. The aim is to combine these elements with the language of contemporary fantasy cinema. "Our The Divine Comedy is, after all, a modern fantasy-horror film. It is certainly the most ambitious movie we have worked on at Skincrawl, despite its modest budget."