Berlinale Queer Horror No Salgas Lands Global Sales Deal Ahead of World Premiere

Cecile van Wellie in 'No Salgas' Credit: Jaime Guerra Variety / Victoria Linares’ haunting queer horror No salgas finds a global sales home ahead of its Berlinale Generation debut.

Berlinale Generation Queer Horror No Salgas Picked Up by ArtHood Entertainment

Fresh out of Berlin, one of the most quietly unnerving genre titles heading into Berlinale’s Generation sidebar has officially found a global sales home.

Berlin-based ArtHood Entertainment has acquired worldwide sales rights to No salgas (Don’t Come Out), the queer coming-of-age horror feature from Dominican filmmaker Victoria Linares, ahead of the film’s Berlinale Generation premiere, per Variety.

While the Generation lineup is often associated with youth-centered dramas, ArtHood was quick to emphasize that No salgas operates far outside expectations—leaning hard into horror as both atmosphere and social weapon.

“It haunted us for a while after watching it,” said ArtHood’s Manola Novelli. “It’s not what we would expect from Generation. Victoria managed to combine artistic qualities with festival and commercial potential, using horror to confront conservative Dominican society in a way that’s entertaining, relevant, and universal.”

No salgas marks Linares’ first narrative feature following her acclaimed docu-fiction hybrid Ramona, which previously premiered in Berlinale’s Generation sidebar before winning the Grand Prix Documentaire at Cinélatino and landing on MUBI.

That documentary background deeply informs the film’s approach. Rather than treating horror as spectacle, No salgas weaponizes dread to explore identity, repression, and performative allyship within a rigidly conservative culture.

The film follows Liz (played by Cecile van Welie), a medical student grappling with her sexual identity in the Dominican Republic. When an unexplained supernatural force begins turning people close to her violent, private fear and public silence collide—often with devastating consequences.

The story opens brutally: two teenage girls flee into the night, only for one to be murdered by her possessed mother. A year later, unresolved grief resurfaces during a memorial trip, where desire, guilt, and repression awaken the same violent force once more.

Starring Camila Issa, Camila Santana, and newcomer Gabriela Cortés, the film frames horror not as punishment—but as a manifestation of social hypocrisy and fear.

Linares co-wrote and produced the film with Carlos Marranzini, noting that the project began with a single haunting image in 2016: four blood-covered women driving down a highway at night.

“That image stayed with me for days,” Linares explained. “From there, we slowly found our way into horror—and then into the social dimensions filtered through my own experience of coming out.”

That slow evolution mirrors the film’s production history. Despite tapping into Dominican film incentives, No salgas took nearly a decade to finance and complete, navigating the very conservative environment the film ultimately critiques.

Shot entirely on location in the Dominican Republic, the film recalls the way Latin American genre cinema has increasingly used horror as cultural reckoning—most notably Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona, which reframed national trauma through supernatural terror.

At a time when queer horror is often flattened into allegory or metaphor-lite genre exercises, No salgas feels sharper—and riskier. Linares directly interrogates the idea of the “ally,” describing it as often performative rather than genuinely supportive, and positions horror as the inevitable consequence of that contradiction.

Produced by Linares, Marranzini, and Jose Jimenez through El Perro de Argento, the film’s Dominican rights remain with the filmmakers, while ArtHood prepares to introduce the title to international buyers following its Berlinale debut.

For genre fans tracking the evolution of queer horror beyond North American frameworks, No salgas is one to watch closely—less about monsters in the dark, and more about what happens when silence, fear, and tolerance become indistinguishable.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on its Berlin reception and next moves on the international circuit.