Production has wrapped on “Exit to the Guillotine,” a psychological horror-thriller from Zachary Cotler starring Peyton List (“Cobra Kai,” “School Spirits”) and Gustaf Skarsgård (“Oppenheimer,” “Vikings,” “Westworld”).
The film follows Burne Peter (List), an off-Broadway actress who joins an international theater troupe at a decommissioned prison on the Ukrainian coast. The troupe, led by famous but unstable director Dado Levytskyy (Skarsgård), is rehearsing a new translation of an old Polish play. But each time they rehearse, an actor vanishes.
The cast also features Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova (“Heated Rivalry”), Lea Myren (“The Ugly Stepsister”), Dylan Douglas (“Killing Hitler”), Marcin Czarnik (“Sunset,” “Son of Saul”), Nikki Si’ulepa (“The Whole of the Moon”), Michael Golab (“Splinter Cell: Deathwatch”), Pablo Sandstrom (“The Strangers,” “Day Drinker”) and introduces Jan Kłapyta.
Cotler wrote and directed “Exit to the Guillotine.” Cotler’s films are produced under the Winter Film Company, an independent film company he founded.
His directorial-debut drama “Maya Dardel,” about the titular writer who announces she intends to kill herself and that young male writers can compete to become the executor of her estate, won best screenplay at the Prague Independent Film Festival in 2017. His other credits include “When I’m a Moth,” a 2019 “un-biopic” of Hillary Rodham (pre-Clinton) set in 1969 Alaska, and “The Wall of Mexico,” a 2019 feature about a wealthy Mexican-American family who builds a wall around their ranch to stop townspeople from stealing their well water.
Producers include Magdalena Zyzak, Bonnie Timmermann, Marius Vilunas, Jean Pierre Magro and J. Todd Harris. List, Skarsgård, Thomas Pettinelli and Mark Jazwin are executive producers.
