Lutano

After disappearing without a trace twenty years earlier, a man returns from the mountains shrouded in mystery just as a young woman comes back to the village she always wanted to leave behind. As her obsession with him grows, a series of deaths threatens to unearth the town’s darkest secrets. An unsettling tale of folk horror, dark romance, and rural legends.

Rosina returns to her hometown after failing to achieve her dream of becoming a filmmaker in the city. There, she finds a valley scarred by war, depopulation, and decades of stories passed down from one generation to the next. Every night, a strange dark mist known as the Lutano descends from the mountains and blankets the landscape. No one knows exactly what it is, but everyone has learned to live with it.

As she tries to rebuild her life alongside her grandmother María Rosa and her neighbors Lucrecia, Juana, and Teodomira, Rosina is forced to confront the past she had tried to leave behind. She also struggles with the jolt, a disturbing gift that allows her to sense the memories, emotions, and suffering trapped within objects and places. Through these visions, she discovers that beneath the valley’s surface lies the memory of generations marked by violence, loss, and silence.

Life in the village changes forever when Xurde reappears. He vanished twenty years earlier as a child and was long presumed dead. His impossible return turns the town into a media phenomenon and reopens wounds that never truly healed. Fascinated by him, Rosina begins an intense relationship fueled by attraction, desire, and growing obsession. For the first time, she feels understood by someone who shares her loneliness, frustrations, and long-buried pain.

But as their connection deepens, Rosina begins to sense something deeply unsettling. Xurde seems linked to a series of deaths that shake the valley. First, Diego disappears, the man who abused her as a teenager and continued harassing her after she returned home. Soon afterward, Margo dies, the acclaimed screenwriter who years earlier stole one of Rosina’s stories and ruined her career. What initially appear to be impossible acts of revenge reveal a far more disturbing truth: Xurde seems to feed on the suffering of those around him.

Guided by the visions brought on by the jolt, Rosina finds Nemesio, an elderly former miner who lives in isolation and spends his days building an extraordinarily detailed model of the village. Upon touching it, she discovers it is far more than a miniature replica. It possesses the power to alter reality itself. For decades, Nemesio has used this ability to quietly protect the community, preventing accidents and caring for his neighbors from afar. Yet he carries a burden of guilt he cannot escape. When the real Xurde disappeared as a child, Nemesio tried and failed to find him. Unable to accept the loss, he ultimately used the model to bring him back.

But what emerged from the Lutano mist was not the missing boy.

It was a creature born from the valley’s wounds, its guilt, its violence, and the accumulated memory of generations.

As Rosina struggles between her love for Xurde and the horror awakened by his true nature, the next victims become María Rosa, Lucrecia, Juana, and Teodomira: the women who preserve the living memory of the community through songs, legends, and stories. Rosina finally understands the truth. Xurde does not kill out of cruelty or revenge. He feeds on human suffering. The more pain he absorbs, the stronger he becomes. And no one carries more memories, more losses, or deeper wounds than those who have spent their entire lives safeguarding the stories of the valley.

With the community collapsing around her and Nemesio driven to suicide by the consequences of his creation, Rosina realizes she must destroy the model to prevent the creature from growing even more powerful. But in doing so, she uncovers an even more disturbing truth. Just as Nemesio created Xurde, she herself has created the story we have just read.

The boundary between author, character, and monster dissolves.

Rosina understands that she has guided every character toward their fate, just as any storyteller shapes the destiny of their creations. And like Nemesio, she too has brought into existence a creature nourished by pain.

RELEVANT INFORMATION: Raquel Presumido is a Spanish writer and educator whose work spans essays, poetry, and fiction.

She made her debut with Mice in the Pantry (2025), a collection of stories set in the rural borderlands between Asturias and León, blending oral tradition, mystery, surrealism, and humor.

In 2026, she published Lutano, her first novel, further exploring this rural and fantastic imaginary world. The novel combines supernatural horror, mystery, historical memory, and a powerful metafictional dimension.

Its audiovisual potential is particularly striking thanks to the strength of its imagery, from the ever-present mist and rugged mountains to the mysterious miniature village, all of which contribute to a haunting and highly cinematic atmosphere. The contrast between rural everyday life and the gradual intrusion of the supernatural also allows for a form of horror that steadily escalates in intensity.

AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Limited Series, Feature Film, TV Movie.

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.