Teenager Cata is having a pretty normal summer on Mallorca, swimming in the Mediterranean and flirting with a Swedish boy. Then her grandmother dies. One day, she slips into her abuela’s dress and feels something pull her closer to the woman she just lost.

That’s the setup for “Forastera,” a Spanish ghost story that trades scares for something quieter and more unsettling. Director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias uses the sun-drenched island as the backdrop for a film about grief, memory, and the strange ways the dead stay with us.

The debut feature won the FIPRESCI Prize at Toronto International Film Festival and picked up awards at festivals across Spain, including Best New Director for Aleñar Iglesias at Seminci Valladolid. Critics are calling it tender, poetic, and a revelation for star Zoe Stein.

“Forastera” opens May 29 at Film Forum in New York. The title translates to “stranger,” which feels right for a movie about becoming someone else while trying to hold onto someone you’ve lost. It’s the kind of ghost story that lingers because it’s less about hauntings and more about what we carry forward.

What happens when a bestselling fantasy author is a decade past deadline and completely out of ideas?

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, the duo behind Criminal and Kill Or Be Killed, are exploring that nightmare in Unfinished Tales, a new original graphic novel coming this winter from Image Comics.

The story follows Finnegan Blake, a wildly successful author whose epic fantasy series became a massive TV show. There’s just one problem: he’s ten years overdue on the final book and has no clue how to finish it. When an old friend arrives with a solution to his writer’s block, things spiral into dark territory fast.

“I’ve always been fascinated by why people write, or in this case, why they don’t,” Brubaker said. “It’s a deep dive into the world of writers and publishing, the pressure to succeed, and what that may cost you. It’s also a very fucked up thriller about egos and ambition.”

The book mixes Stephen King’s Misery with The Talented Mr. Ripley, and somehow threads the needle for fans of both Tolkien and Megan Abbott.

Unfinished Tales hits comic shops November 11 and bookstores December 8. For indie creators grinding through their own deadlines and creative demons, this one might hit a little too close to home.

A trio of stories connected by an ancient ginkgo tree just won director Ildikó Enyedi the Sloan Science on Screen Award.

SFFILM announced the honor for Enyedi’s Silent Friend at the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs through May 4. The film stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Léa Seydoux, and Luna Wedler as souls linked across a century. Enyedi takes home $5,000 along with the award.

But the bigger story is the $115,000 in grants going to five filmmakers developing science-driven screenplays. The Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative, now in its tenth year, pairs writers with science advisors to shape stories where discovery becomes drama.

Destiny Macon’s Talk Black follows a Black engineer battling gentrification and workplace sexism. Justin Kim WooSŏk’s The Green Corridor tracks a Korean-American anthropologist searching for a rumored tiger in the DMZ. Each receives $35,000.

Three more writers split $20,000 grants for early-stage projects inspired by real scientific breakthroughs. Lane Unsworth’s Hello Neighbor imagines how NASA would announce alien life. Sid Gopinath and Aditya Joshi’s One Inch From Earth chronicles the scramble to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa.

“We’re getting to support a filmmaker at the screenplay stage while the story is being shaped,” says SFFILM’s Masashi Niwano.

Since 2015, the initiative has supported 40 artists. The goal? Help audiences connect to science through cinema that gets the facts right.

A farmhand’s simple life gets upended when village elders force him to march across Transylvania with a dangerous stranger. Their mission: take down the region’s murderous viceroy.

That’s the setup for Regicide, a new ongoing series from Image Comics launching August 12. Writer Patrick Kindlon (Tigress Island, Gehenna: Naked Aggression) and artist Ludovic Lalliat (Akutezoïde) are promising a bloodsoaked fantasy that mixes Dracula with Berserk.

“True monster-of-the-issue storytelling where you are guaranteed sensational and sensual battles for the souls of our heroes every month,” Kindlon said. “Violence you can feel in a world so dripping with evil the droplets will hit your head as you read.”

The series will feature multiple covers for the first issue, including variants by Atomcyber and Kerbcrawlerghost, plus a blank sketch cover for artists. Digital versions will be available through Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Play.

For indie creators working in dark fantasy, this is the kind of swing-for-the-fences project that shows there’s still room for uncompromising horror storytelling in comics.