Step into the shadows with this collection of short films that delve into the eerie, unsettling, fantastic and deeply human. From psychological horror to bleak satire, quiet melancholy to spine-chilling tension, the short films of this programme explore the darker corners of life where fears, secrets, and truths lurk. Some will disturb and others will haunt - all through powerfully dark stories.
 

PROGRAM: 

▶A long night ahead, 28’, Julien Bernard-Simmonds, Belgium • 2024          
Mauro, a truck driver, meets a strange group of young people at a roadside rest stop who lead him into the woods for a journey bordering life and death.

▶Went the night well?, 11’, Andrew Hahn, USA • 2023          
A woman is experiencing a lucid dream. Or perhaps she is being reprogrammed. She believes she will die in the morning. Or perhaps she is already dead. WENT THE NIGHT WELL? collages the dialogue of Diana Dors with the music of Delia Derbyshire and Paul Zaza. The montage contains shots from 40 classic films.

▶The dead euraisan blackbird, 10’, Arpen Sargsyan, Sweden • 2024          
Yan's encounter with a couple at the local park evolves dramatically, taking unexpected twists that lead to a complex entanglement of realisations, ultimately challenging how they perceive one another. 

▶Krampuss 8’, Guðni Líndal Benediktsson, Iceland • 2023          
On Christmas Eve, an Icelandic family comes face to face with the Yule Cat, a ravenous creature of folklore hungry for those who didn't get clothes for Christmas. 

▶They left for the Abyss, 25’, Max Larsson, Sweden  • 2024          
In a quiet village just on the border of Norway and Sweden lives a young man who is a shut-in. The only person he is in contact with is his best friend, who comes by every day to eat with the young man. As the truth behind his reclusive behavior unravels, something appears in the towns park. A small deep crack in the ground.

▶La Vedova Nera, 21’, Fiume, Juilan McKinnon, France • 2023 
Alfredo, a young Italian student, is cycling through the streets of a foreign city when he is caught in a thunderstorm. Seeking shelter, he is attracted by the strange call emanating from a porn cinema that seems to have emerged from another time. Guided by his fantasies, he finds himself trapped in a perverse game: an assassin eliminates the cinema's locked-in customers one by one. Soon, he's the only one left in the theater, a fragile moth caught in the web of a giant spider.