Spotlight on Horror #WFA2023 #WinterFear

Sam, a corporate employee who dresses as a man, makes her journey back home at night after work. Her friend Alice gives her a list of possible riddles she might be asked by the predatory animal-headed men who rule this world. A corporate lion, a drunk pig, a gangster wolf and owl, and a fox roommate that does not understand boundaries, stop her path and won’t let her pass until she answers the riddles correctly.

Trapped in a time-warped house, two sisters try to survive the immensity of each others’ love.

ŁOBYRA is a chapter of an ongoing gloomy tale about the rise of the grouse king. It tells of strange looming figures, who emerged under unknown circumstances, not revealing if their intensions are good or evil. Seemingly attracted by an invisible calling, they are steering towards the summit of a mountain and summon something, which was put to sleep for a long time.

Marc, a young city dweller, goes into the countryside where he stays on his own in a lonely house. He is expecting his girlfriend Louise who is supposed to come and join him soon, but she is late showing up. Marc is keen on keeping fit and becomes obsessed with the healthy daily routine he has set up for himself, but the silence grows heavier and heavier, and Louise hasn’t arrived yet. In the anxious surrounding calm, Marc gradually falls prey to the assault of all kinds of sounds that are usually ignored and sounds that are not usually heard.

After a debilitating stroke, Malorie, on the brink of a career breakthrough, finds herself at war with her own body and is forced to watch as her life slowly unravels. As her condition continues to worsen, she begins to detach from herself and those she loves, eventually placing her young daughter, Cam, in mortal danger.

PEACOCK is a South African gothic horror following the journey of a young woman into the dark recesses of the Afrikaner psyche and its compromised past. Anna is stuck in a puritanical institution known simply as The Foundation. When Anna transgresses The Foundation’s strict moral standards, she is sent away to care for Sarel, one of its founding members. An Apartheid-era theologian living out his last days in demented paranoia on his isolated farm, Sarel is suffering from visions and hallucinations as he is haunted by ghosts from the past. Suffering her own guilt, Anna gets sucked into Sarel’s dark world and she starts seeing his visions. Anna will have to act from her deepest convictions to save herself.

A young couple taking a tour of their first home can’t wait to find a place of their own. They tour a lovely place with a realtor named Francine, but little do they know she has other things in store.

A disturbed babysitter experiences a sexual awakening while using LSD to alternatively treat a seemingly “sick” child from a family with dark secrets of their own.

Set in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, THE CALL OF WATER follows Nadia the night before her childhood home is sold. High on mushrooms, she and her friends inadvertently open a portal, plunging them into the astral-plane. There, she must face The Horned One, an ancient keeper of the land and of the water. To return to her body, Nadia must come to terms with her responsibility to her homeland and the water that it protects.

Musical short film adaptation of the classic Poe story. A desperate composer imagines himself both the victim and the Inquisition in Poe’s THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Reality and fantasy converge with frightening consequences.

In order to survive, a young woman must find a way to live up to her mother’s demands of perfection. After all, mother knows best…