The second day of the festival will bring vampires, mermaids, monsters, and other bodies into the light. The films shown on March 9 will question the specificity of the horror genre and its conventional understandings. The second day will deconstruct stereotypical archetypes of the monster that have delimited states of normality and pushed everyone else outside of the frame.
In the shadows of Bad City–a lawless hellhole, inhabited by underworld figures, drug users, and pimps–a lonesome vampire wanders around. Dressed in a hijab and a striped t-shirt, she follows local villagers. One night she meets Arash. The fablelike drama offers a powerful symbolic display of feminine power and outlaw charm and at the same time is a dark comedy that promises a lifetime of neuroses.
A white bisexual vampire, Lillia, is trapped in a monotonous cycle with her vampire partner, Luke. Her encounter with Black lesbian Zena, who is reading about goddesses across religions and cultures and thinking about the horror film genre, pulls Lillia out of a state of bad faith.
In the middle of the Colombian coffee region, Aribada, the resurrected monster, meets Las Traviesas, a group of indigenous transwomen from the Emberá tribes. The magical, the dreamlike, and the performative coexist in their unique world and fashion their own future.
The auto-narrative film tells us about a queer couple and “Layer’s” reproductive story, its challenges and oddities.
With its original soundtrack, the lure is an absurdist genre experiment, verging on musical and horror. You can practically taste the melancholy of national sentiments, salt water—and the blood.
