The stories of the desperate souls who pass through the doors of 508, a room on the fifth floor of an anonymous, decaying hotel. We are taken on a surreal and blackly comic journey down its lonely corridors and behind its out-dated furnishings and stained surfaces. The story plunges us into the ever-turning carousel of haunted lives who check in and out of the establishment.Adulterers, lonely businessmen, and hustlers grapple with their demons whilst a prying, occasionally sinister hotel staff always seems to be within earshot. Inside this hotel the mundane transforms into an implement of threat; a faulty light fixture appears to contain a hidden camera; a heating unit whispers to guests with increasing menace; a television set randomly flips channels, displaying TV shows which reveal a guest's secret paranoid fantasies; and a stray look into the bathroom mirror becomes the quickest way to disprove your existence.

“A genuinely impressive achievement. The use of camera and sound is very strong and creates an unsettling, Lynchian atmosphere. It has a particular, very personal and idiosyncratic tone which is the sure sign of a good first film. It has its own voice.” - Kevin Macdonald, Oscar-winning director, One Day in September, Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland

“I have known and followed Julio Maria Martino's work as a theatre director for years and so was intrigued to watch his first feature. Sophisticated, eerie and unsettling, Country of Hotels is an impressive art house debut, sure to attract a cult following. One to watch.” - Benedict Cumberbatch (Actor, Producer):