First off, we are excited to reveal our 2021 poster art from regular designer Ilan Sheady.
In response to the continued uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, and by popular demand, this year’s festival will be a hybrid event. The live event will take place at Odeon Great Northern in Manchester from 7th to 10th Oct and be followed by an online version, running from 14th to 17th October.
Grimmfest Online 2021 will offer audiences the chance to experience the festival programme in the comfort of their own homes, as well as enabling them to catch up on anything they might have missed at the live event.
The virtual festival will complement and sit alongside the live festival, with much of the content crossing both events. Many of the feature films and shorts that play the live festival will also be featured within the online event but there will also be some online exclusives.
We are excited to announce two exclusive feature film presentations only available on our virtual event and both UK premieres.
Ben Charles-Edwards explores the damage done and the demons unleashed by a traumatic domestic confrontation in FATHER OF FLIES, a nerve-jangling study of childhood terrors, family dysfunction and repressed memory, starring Camilla Rutherford and the late Nicholas Tucci in one of his last roles.
FOR ROGER see’s THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT meet KRAPP’S LAST TAPE, as a grieving man, poring over video recordings of his late partner is confronted with some uncomfortable truths in Aaron Bartuska’s razor-sharp reinvention of the “found footage” movie.
Feature films will be presented as double bills with limited viewing windows on each day of the virtual festival and geo-blocked to the UK, so as to maintain their premiere statuses around the world, while our short film programmes will be available across the virtual festival dates.
Plus we will present an exclusive online Q&A with our 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Dee Wallace (E.T., The Howling, Critters, Cujo).
Every selected film will be in the running for our annual Grimmfest ‘Reaper’ awards, which include BEST FEATURE, BEST SHORT, BEST DIRECTOR, BEST ACTRESS, BEST ACTOR, BEST SCREENPLAY, BEST SCARE, BEST SCORE, BEST SFX and BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY.
Grimmfest is also delighted to announce the Jury for this year’s festival. Deliberating over this year’s films and selecting the winning films will be Horror Channel’s Senior Channel Manager Stewart Bridle, Canadian film director, Justin McConnell (LIFE CHANGER, CLAPBOARD JUNGLE), US actress and director Natasha Halevi (BEAUTY JUICE, DON’T GO OUTSIDE), DIABOLIQUE editor Kat Ellinger, and UK actor and director Dominic Brunt (BAIT, BEFORE DAWN ATTACK OF THE ADULT BABIES).
FULL VIRTUAL FESTIVAL LINE UP:
● FOR ROGER (Aaron Bartuska, USA)
● FATHER OF FLIES (Ben Charles-Edwards UK / USA)
● SLAPFACE (Jeremiah Kipp, USA)
● THE NIGHTS BELONG TO THE MONSTERS (Sebastian Perillo, Argentina)
● HAPPY TIMES (Michael Mayer, Israel / USA)
● NIGHT AT THE EAGLE INN (Erik Bloomquist, USA)
● VAL (Aaron Fradkin, USA, 77 min)
● THE SPORE (D.M. Cunningham, USA)
● THE PIZZAGATE MASSACRE (John Valley, USA)
● MOTHERLY (Craig David Wallace, Canada)
● SHOT IN THE DARK (Keene McRae, USA)
● NIGHT DRIVE (Brad Baruh, USA)
● MIDNIGHT (Oh-seung Kwon, South Korea)
● FACELESS (Marcel Sarmiento, USA)
● WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR (Jane Schoenbrun, USA)
● THE FREE FALL (Adam Stillwell, USA)
● ON THE THIRD DAY (Daniel de la Vega, Argentina)
● THE GUEST ROOM (Stefano Lodovichi, Italy)
● HOTEL POSEIDON (Stefan Lernous, Belgium)
● FORGIVENESS (Alex Kahuam, Mexico)
● TWO WITCHES (Pierre Tsigaridis, USA)
● KING KNIGHT (Richard Bates Jnr, USA)
● TARUMAMA / LLANTO MALDITO (Andres Beltran, Colombia)
● THE RIGHTEOUS (Mark O’Brien, Canada)
Passes and tickets can be purchased from www.grimmfest.com
GRIMMFEST: International festival of horror, cult and fantastic cinema and UK Exhibitor. Grimmfest bring the very best in new independent genre cinema and classic genre films to Manchester UK and beyond. With regular screenings throughout the year and the main festival in early October. Grimmfest is now in its 2nd decade and was recently voted one of the top 50 Bloody Best Genre Festivals in the World (for the second time) by Movie Maker magazine.
For online content, Grimmfest is working with Eventive, one of the key players in the virtual festival area, to offer DRM-protected, Geo-blocked movie premieres. They will also host exclusive livestream and recorded interviews, special events and press rooms, bringing in the filmmakers and stars to present and Q&A the films, while also helping to create a complete festival experience for the fans.
F RATING: Grimmfest subscribes to the “F Rating” system, designed to highlight women on screen and behind the camera, and developed at Bath Film Festival in 2014. The F-Rating is awarded to films directed by and/or written by women. If the film also stars significant women in their own right, the film is Triple F-Rated