Fantastic Film Festival 2026

Fantastic Film Festival Artistic Director Hudson Sowada grew up in the dark. Not metaphorically, but in cinema seats, running around Fremantle putting up illegal posters for his father’s Revelation Film Festival and watching films he probably shouldn’t have been seeing. That early exposure to the strange and the unruly now shapes Fantastic Film Festival Australia, which returns for its seventh year from April 23 to May 15 across Sydney.

This is not a festival built for safe tastes or easy viewing.

The program spans 37 films across horror, sci-fi, cult and the unclassifiable, mixing new local features with international titles, restorations and 22 shorts. It also carves out space for deep dives with “Vampire Weekend” running as a blood-soaked marathon of seven films, while “FLESH//GHOST//MACHINE: Japanese Nightmares” pulls together restored works from the J-horror boom.

Sowada’s taste still leans toward the unexpected. “At its core, there’s a kind of attitude, a punk approach to storytelling,” he says. Budget and genre matter less than intent. “You can kind of have a relationship with the person who’s trying to make it… the way they see the world is a unique and compelling offering.” Or, more bluntly: “You can tell pretty quick… if it’s got the juice.”

That instinct shapes a lineup that swings from the creeping unease of Hokum to the abrasive chaos of Dead Eyes, alongside the punky, blood-splattered energy of closing night film Penny Lane is Dead.

“We’re living in a world that feels like it’s falling apart at the seams,” Sowada says. “The films being made right now are about people who can’t control their world… creatures and entities beyond their understanding.” Genre cinema, he argues, offers a release. Drawing on Wes Craven, he says these films do not create fear but release it. The result is less escapism than pressure valve, a way of processing what feels too large or too strange to confront directly.

Building that program is far less polished than it looks. For months, it exists as “a spreadsheet of film titles and email chains” before slowly taking shape. “It becomes real when you start putting the printed program together,” Sowada says. “You create your own version of an audience journey.”

A new addition gives that process sharper focus. The inaugural Fantastic Film Festival Prize, developed with Umbrella Entertainment, awards $10,000 to an Australian feature that pushes genre filmmaking forward. For Sowada, it is about backing work that sits outside traditional pathways. “There is so much talent out there that doesn’t fit within the prestige perspective… we want to support those voices and provide a home.”

“Pushing boundaries,” he adds, is not about shock for its own sake. “The best films understand what an audience wants… but also subvert and challenge and twist that experience.”

“If you’re making a horror film, it needs to go all the way… to the absolute limit and beyond.”

That willingness to go too far is part of the appeal. “I love seeing half a star and five stars after a screening,” Sowada says. “It can be really important and meaningful for somebody, and just a pile of garbage for somebody else. But that’s the joy of it.”

His picks reflect that range. Penny Lane is Dead brings a punk rock edge and ‘80s beachside nostalgia to a chaotic survival story, with director Mia Kate Russell appearing for Q&As in both cities. Obsession taps into the current moment with a dark twist on desire and control. And www.rachelormont.com, which Sowada describes as feeling like “an acid trip when you’ve got your VR headset left on,” pushes deep into the warped logic of online identity.

But the films are only part of it. What matters is the room. “There’s nothing more satisfying than getting off a roller coaster,” Sowada says. “You feel like a human being again.” The festival, at its core, is about creating a space for that shared release.

A place for audiences who want something stranger, louder and less contained, and for filmmakers who might not fit anywhere else.

Fantastic Film Festival Australia runs April 23 to May 15.