2024.09.16
Here you'll find some of the feature films that will participate this year at the 35th Horror & Fantasy Film Festival, that will take place between October 25 and November 1.
During the World Cup final between Argentina and Holland, at the height of the military dictatorship, a group of torturers violently break into a home and abduct a group of youngsters to be taken to a clandestine detention centre. What begins with an inhumane interrogation becomes a real nightmare: they have abducted the wrong group of people. The centre will become a vision of hell itself in the latest film by the Onetti Brothers –Francesca (2015), What the Waters Left Behind (2017), Abrakadabra (2018)–.
Tormented by the pointlessness and pressure of life and death, ghosts and humans in a small village in La Mancha will go to any lengths to end their problems, eagerly throwing themselves into extreme and desperate plans to do so.
The introverted Anx wakes up one night in his bed alongside the livewire Cass. Although in principle they seem to have little in common, something begins to blossom. But their incipient relationship is threatened when a mysterious virus spreads across the planet, gradually causing all those infected to merge with everything they touch.
After years of sacrifice, the Kamiki family finally fulfil their dream of buying a house in the country. They move their full of hope and enthusiasm... until they discover that they will have to live with the vengeful ghost of a teenage girl murdered years before. A new and highly humorous twist on the haunted house subgenre courtesy of the director of films including Cult (2013), Sadako vs. Kayako (2016) and Welcome to the Occult Woods (2022).
Black comedy set in the nineteen nineties, centred on the devoutly religious Bernie (Nick Frost) and his sitcom family. The Russian workers they have hired to do some building work on their house turn out to be dangerous criminals who are after the spoils from a robbery which have been hidden in the walls for years. To save his family, Bernie will be forced to man up and take them all on, with every weapon he can lay his hands on.
The young Romain stops off at his drug dealer's house, tries a new pill, and is all set to go out clubbing. On the way he sees an injured woman at the side of the highway. When he gets her into his car she begins to behave very strangely, before eventually stabbing herself and bleeding to death. A bad trip? Or something else? One thing is certain: the night is just beginning.
When Dani is brutally murdered in the cottage she was refurbishing with her husband Ted, everyone thinks that the killer is a patient from the nearby psychiatric hospital where Ted works. The suspect turns up dead shortly after. A year has passed, and Darcy, Dani's blind twin sister, a psychic and collector cursed objects, appears at the house where Ted now lives with his new partner, to discover what really happened there. The second feature film by Ireland's Damian MacCarthy, who has presented a number of shorts at the Festival, along with his previous work Caveat (2020).
In the popular coastal resort of Atsumi City, bathers have begun to disappear in strange circumstances. Their bodies are found in pieces, showing signs of having been attacked by… a huge shark. The authorities are concerned. The police investigate. A wildly fun Japanese film addressing the killer shark subgenre without prejudice.
Chumphon province, Thailand, 1941. During the Second World War, Mok and his motley group of young soldiers face the invading Japanese forces, who bring with them a horrific biological weapon. Mok's older brother Mek is a junior officer who is ordered to join forces with the Japanese troops when they lose control of their own weapon. His orders could mean the death of his brother.
To escape the police after a robbery, Joseph and Sidney, two brothers who have had little contact over recent years, take refuge in a farm which takes them on a journey through time. They plan to stay there for a few weeks until the situation calms down and they can resume their lives. But none of that will prove straightforward, as a mysterious force puts their family bonds to the test.
Romantic comedy telling the story of Agnes, who travels through time in search of love. After her first appearance in Scotland in 1688, where she falls in love with Alex, she suffers a violent death and is reincarnated a century later, to meet up and fall in love with the same man time and again. A journey through history and love courtesy of the director and star of Prevenge (2016).
FRANZ KAFKA AT TABAKALERA
The Festival has this year organised two sessions dedicated to Franz Kakfa at Tabakalera, marking the centenary of his death. On 26 October there will be a screening of the adaptation of The Castle directed by Michael Haneke in 1997, followed on the 31st by a marathon session of short films based on or inspired by the Czech writer's work.
Late one cold, winter's night, the land surveyor K. arrives in the town of Brückenhof. This marks the start of his attempts to reach the castle which looms over the place to begin the work for which he has been hired, although no one knows why. But the more effort he puts into this, the further he seems to be from his goal. Michael Haneke directed this television adaptation of Franz Kafka's unfinished novel in the same year (and with some of the same cast) as Funny Games.
The Country Doctor (1953). Lorenza Mazzetti. UK
The Flat / Byt (1968). Jan Švankmajer. Czechoslovakia
La cabina (1972). Antonio Mercero. Spain
The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (1977). Caroline Leaf. Canada
Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1993). Peter Capaldi. UK
L'Homme qui attendait (2006). Theodore Ushev. Canada
Dream of Kafka (2020). David Babayan. Armenia