UK horror and fantasy film festival FrightFest (August 22-26) has selected 69 features for its 25th anniversary edition, including opening title Broken Bird and closing film The Substance.
Playing its world premiere, Broken Bird is the feature directorial debut of UK actress Joanne Mitchell. Based on Tracey Sheals’ short story and Mitchell’s short film Sybil, the film stars Rebecca Calder as a mortician whose dark desires are becoming insatiable and out of control.
The festival will close with the English premiere of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance starring Demi Moore as a fading celebrity who uses a cell-replicating substance that creates a younger, better version of herself.
The film debuted in Competition at Cannes this year, winning Fargeat the best screenplay award, and will have its UK premiere as the closing title of Edinburgh Film Festival’s Midnight Madness strand earlier in August. Mubi acquired UK-Ireland distribution rights prior to Cannes.
This year’s festival has moved to the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square where it will play in all five screens, plus the two nearby Odeon Luxe West End screens.
Further titles among the 28 world premieres on the FrightFest programme include Jon Spira’s documentary The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee, which uses interviews, archival footage and animations to recreate the late UK actor; US crime thriller Derelict by Jonathan Zaurin; and cinema-set sci-fi Test Screening by Clark Baker.
The festival will also pay the international premiere of John Farrelly’s The Ghost, billed as “the first Irish-language horror film ever made”, following its debut at Galway Film Fleadh yesterday (July 10).
The returning First Blood strand plays six debut films from emerging UK talent, including Sophie Osbourn’s The Monster Beneath Us and Joy Wilkinson’s 7 Keys.
The festival guest line-up will be unveiled in the coming weeks.
“FrightFest, the dark heart of cinema, has been beating loud and proud now for an amazing 25 years,” said co-director Alan Jones. “An incredible quarter of a century that has seen major challenges and transformations to the global film industry that FrightFest has embodied, embraced and emblazoned. Our past 25 glorious years have shown FrightFest in a state of continuous evolution, something we are determined will never, ever stop. So let the 25th Anniversary FrightFest begin.”
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