Fantastic Film Festival Australia, a festival celebrating cult, genre and alternative cinema, has locked in its return and full line-up for 2026, promising 37 films, six premiere local features, 17 restorations and classics, as well as an array of short films showcasing the next generation of fearless storytellers.
The festival runs from 23 April to 15 May at select cinemas in Melbourne and Sydney.
Fantastic Film Festival 2026 – quick links
Fantastic Film Festival 2026 program
The annual Fantastic Film Festival will be headlined by the Australian premiere of Hokum, a supernatural horror starring Adam Scott (Severance) and directed by Damian McCarthy (Caveat, Oddity).
The film had its world premiere at SXSW internationally, and has achieved plenty of buzz for its interpretation of Celtic mythology and folklore.
There will also be a showcase of four locally-made feature-length films, which are all in the running for the Fantastic Film Prize for Australian genre cinema. One of the four films will be selected as winner by a jury, with its creators awarded a $10,000 cash prize, supported by Umbrella Entertainment.
The four finalists to be screened during Fantastic Film Festival 2026 are:
- Cruel Hands, directed by Al Kalyk
- Lenore, directed by David Ward
- Squids, directed by Ryan Zorzut
- Wolf Cat Fever, directed by Josh ‘Sinbad’ Collins
Select screenings of these films will include a post-film Q&A with their directors, as a platform to discuss their art and genre cinema.
Other films set to screen during the festival include:
- Penny Lane is Dead, a ‘horror-punk’ slasher film set in a remote beach house in 1986.
- Obsession, a ‘tale for the terminally lovesick that transforms a cringeworthy romantic wish into a full-blown nightmare’.
- 100 Nights of Hero, a ‘star-studded feminist fable … [that] flips the Arabian folktales of One Thousand and One Nights on its head’.
- The Girl Who Stole Time, a ‘gilded fever-dream of early 20th-century Shanghai that tells the powerful story of a young woman who is given the power of eternal time’.
- Dracula, an iPhone-shot anthology focused on AI, nationalism and vampire mythology.
- The Holy Boy, a queer coming-of-age horror story.
- About a Place in the Kinki Region, a film of ‘whispered urban legends and vanished souls’.
ScreenHub: Penny Lane is Dead review – a gripping ripper
Themed retrospectives of Japanese horror and classic vampire movies
In addition to these premieres and screenings, Fantastic Film Festival 2026 also features two retrospective showcases themed on classic elements of cinema.
In the FLESH//GHOST/MACHINE: Japanese Nightmares strand, you can learn more about Japanese horror and its influence, through screenings of seven films from the 1960s and beyond, including Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Ichi the Killer and Uzumaki.
In the Vampire Weekend strand, you can experience the heights of vampire cinema, with seven films charting the history of this genre. Films screening include The Lost Boys, Near Dark, Let the Right One In, The Addiction and Twilight.
Fantastic Film Festival 2026 runs from 23 April to 15 May at the Lido Cinemas, Thornbury Picture House and Brunswick Picture House in Melbourne and the Ritz Cinemas in Sydney.
Also on ScreenHub: Cult game adaptation Exit 8 gets Australian and NZ IMAX run in April
The film adaptation of cult games hit Exit 8 is officially set to release in Australia and New Zealand cinemas on 23 April, with an exclusive IMAX preview run kicking off on 16 April.
The Exit 8 – the original game by Kotake Create – rose to prominence on launch in 2023, for its strange and surreal setting. You play as an observer who finds themselves trapped in an underground subway, charting endless tunnels, searching for the mysterious Exit 8. As you travel, you’ll come across strange ‘anomalies’ that seem to suggest something more sinister around you.
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