Francesca Reale, Dagmara Dominczyk prepare to star in Frontieres ‘Surgat’

“Stranger Things” Francesca Reale and “Succession’s” Dagmara Domińczyk are connected to star in horror drama “Surgat” from Michael Borowiec and Sam Marine Borowiec, the New York-based writing-directing team behind “Man Underground,” which won Best First Film at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival.

Sean Lyness (“Abacus” and “Life, Animated”) will join Josh Ruben (“Scare Me”, “Werewolves within”) as producer on the project.

Actors and producers are adding extra weight to the title that’s shaping up as one of the hottest titles at this year’s Frontier Market, which takes place July 21-24, parallel to Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival.

“Surgat” will be presented to potential co-production partners, financiers and sales agents at the formal presentation session for the Frontières Selection held on Thursday, July 21.

Currently in the funding stage, Surjat turns on a pregnant young woman named Heather, whose life is plunged into chaos when a demonic spirit attacks her home, possessing her family members one by one and turning them against her. “Heather is forced to figure out the lengths she’ll go to in order to save her child — and herself,” the synopsis plays.

Rather than simply possessing his victim, the demon, Surjat, possesses everyone else around his target, eventually forcing them to become the monsters they fear most: Michael Borwick and Sam Marin explain their true selves.

“Equal parts supernatural horror and psychodrama — ‘Genetic’ meets ‘Rosemary Baby’ — ‘Surgate’ explores the complex relationships of a family struggling with grief, poverty, addiction and denial, and what happens when long-buried secrets begin to surface,” they add.

Reale played missing lifeguard Heather in the third season of Stranger Things, and also played best friend Natalie Dyer in 2019, SXSW hit “Yes, God, Yes.”

Domicic is best known for her lead role in HBO Max’s Golden Globe “Succession” as Carolina Nowotny, Head of Public Relations at Waystar RoyCo. Born in Poland, she played the lead role in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Venice 2021 main competition “The Lost Daughter”, for which she received three Academy Award nominations.

Portraying a conspiracy theorist who claims to have encountered aliens, Fantasia’s artistic director Mitch Davis declared Man Underground “the latest gem to emerge from the loose American wave of independent character visions in recent years.” “It’s a sometimes funny and sometimes scary act of intense, paranoid drama,” he “immediately announces his co-writing/directing Michael Borwick and Sam Marin as major new talents to watch,” he added.

Participating in the TV series Lab in Gotham, a proof-of-concept Marine pilot “I Adore Dolores” has been selected as one of the must-see comedy short films Vulture. Directed by Borowiec and Marine, “Maggie So Low,” an impromptu comedy short, was named one of the best NoBudge films of 2021. Marine’s screenplay for the drama “Swing Low” was a finalist in the 2022 Emerging Screenwriters Genre Genre Competition.

Domińczyk is represented by Alison Levy and Gary Gersh at Innovative Artists; Reale’s agents are Mark Herzberg and Matt Fiora in Gersh.



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