Aspiring Filmmaker Cerda Takes First Step with The Abandoned

Nacho Cerdá has made it a habit to understand the purpose of death and how it fits into the context of modern society.

With that vision, the 37-year-old filmmaker has continued to pay his respect to the dead with his recent feature film debut, "The Abandoned."

The film tells the story of an American film producer named Marie (played by Anastasia Hille), who searches for her birth parents before learning that she has inherited a house in the middle of a forest in a rural area in Russia.

Being adopted and brought to America as a baby, Marie never knew her real mother. However, the only hint that remains from her past is her Russian farm home.

She soon learns that the house, abandoned and uninhabited for 40 years, represents her birthplace as well as the site of her mother's dead body, which has been found under rather bizarre circumstances.

But what she finds at the farm is much more than just a neglected house in disrepair.

Strange things begin to occur as Marie's guide disappears before she ends up meeting a mysterious man, Nikolai, who claims to be her twin brother. Together they discover that the house holds dangerous secrets to a past that they do not remember.

Stranded in their isolated home, Marie and Nikolai both become terrified by ghostly visions of their own kind wandering throughout the compound. As these dead versions of themselves move from building to building, history takes places in front of their eyes.

While reliving a series of horrifying events and shocking murders that occurred before they were born, the two siblings fend for their lives in a haunted house where their own ghosts patiently wait for their time to expire.

The horror further builds as the film progresses from scene to scene, but it doesn't take too long before Marie and Nikolai are revealed the reason for this depraved reunion and the secret behind their family.

With the film winning fan favorite award at After Dark's "8 Films to Die For" festival in 2006, After Dark Films and Lionsgate announced that "The Abandoned" would hit movie theatres Feb. 23.

Cerdá might be best known for his 1994 cutting-edge release, "Aftermath," a creepy, gruesome Spanish piece on necrophilia that highlights the Spanish filmmaker's trademark style of using only classical music and no dialogue to enhance elaborate camera movements and ultimately the film's suspense.

A year after producing the movie with his Waken Prods partners, drama swirled around Cerdá when he was accused of filming an infamous segment featuring alien autopsy footage. However, the accusation was withdrawn after it was confirmed that Ray Santilli was the director.

Cerdá became interested in filmmaking from an early age, shooting Super 8 and video home movies in high school before eventually graduating from journalism school in Barcelona.

Still with hopes of becoming a filmmaker some day, Cerdá left Spain for Los Angeles after receiving his undergraduate degree to attend the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, where he shot his first 16 mm short, "The Awakening," in 1990.

His filmmaking career continued to blossom years later as his world-acclaimed short "Genesis" earned a gray Nomination for Best Short Film in 1998 to go along with more than 17 other awards from various festivals, including the Sitges Festival and Montreal's Fant-Asia Festival.

Today, Cerdá splits his time between his homeland and Southern California.