Bendita Film Sales has acquired international rights to The Fortunate Isles (Las islas afortunadas), a 15th-century period drama from directors Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado, ahead of its world premiere in the Toronto International Film Festival's Discovery section (Variety). The deal positions the sales agency — international rights means handling distribution to territories outside the film's home market — to bring the title to buyers at one of the autumn festival season's key marketplaces.

Toronto's Discovery section spotlights first and second features from emerging directors. For Girón and Delgado, The Fortunate Isles is their second film, following They Carry Death (Eles transportan a morte), which premiered at Venice International Critics' Week in 2021 and earned a Special Jury Mention at San Sebastián's Zabaltegi-Tabakalera sidebar. The directing pair have collaborated for more than a decade on films exploring history, mythology and materialism; their shorts have screened at Toronto and Locarno (Variety).

The film is set in the Canary Islands in the wake of the French-Norman conquest of the archipelago's eastern islands, as a new colonial order takes root under the Spanish Crown. It follows Fátima, an enslaved woman living under an elderly, decadent French marquis who controls the island's only source of fresh water. When villagers rebel and the well runs dry, she searches the barren landscape for water. Newcomer Luisa Ahl Laabiad leads the cast as Fátima, with Lou Castel and Grégoire Colin co-starring. The film runs 82 minutes and is spoken in Spanish, French and Arabic (TIFF; Variety).

A Spanish-Greek co-production, The Fortunate Isles was produced by Spain's El Viaje Films and La Banda Negra, with Greece's Asterisk* as co-producer. It was shot in the Canary Islands and post-produced in Athens. The producers are José Alayón, Jairo López, José Miguel Viña and Jamie Weiss at El Viaje, alongside La Banda Negra's Samuel Delgado. Marina Alberti, Asterisk*'s Vicky Miha and La Banda Negra's Helena Girón serve as executive producers (Variety).

The film received public backing from Spain's ICAA — the national film institute — the Canary Islands government, the Greek Film Institute, and Creative Europe MEDIA slate funding. During development, it was selected for Mexico's Catapulta Ficunam, Greece's Oxbelly Screenwriters Program, Spain's ECAM Forum and the D'A Film Lab, marking it as a project nurtured through several of Europe and Latin America's development laboratories (Variety).

Bendita Film Sales CEO Luis Renart said the company was drawn immediately to the world Girón and Delgado created, describing the film as a story about power, solidarity and collective survival. Producer Marina Alberti of El Viaje Films, based in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, framed the film as one addressing resource scarcity, power and exploitation while presenting a vision grounded in solidarity, collective care and resistance (Variety).

What gives the project its weight on the festival circuit is the way it braids a historical colonial setting into themes — water as power, labour as resistance — that translate well beyond the 15th century. For a Discovery-section title, it also arrives with an unusually layered production structure, stitching together Spanish, Greek and European funding streams across islands on two ends of the Mediterranean.