Every year, genre-film aficionados can expect a wild, wooly mix of unusual cinematic fare from the Boston Underground Film Festival. This year’s edition features slashers, spiders, and sleepers among its drool-worthy choices. Following is the official press announcement.
Spring festival season is nigh as the 24th annual Boston Underground Film Festival returns to Harvard Square’s arthouse hub The Brattle Theatre with five days of eclectic cinemania from March 20th through the 24th. This year’s lineup is stacked with stone-cold killers, covetous cretins, nocturnal nuisances, and all manner of midnight madness.
BUFF is beyond honored to host the East Coast Premiere of Michael Mohan’s (2021’s The Voyeurs) convent-set horror Immaculate on Opening Night. Starring Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria, The White Lotus), Immaculate follows a newly minted nun who arrives at an idyllic Italian convent where devilish deeds lurk in the shadows of the sun-drenched countryside. Bookending this year’s electric lineup is genre-bending fever dream Boy Kills World, the gleefully bombastic debut from Moritz Mohr, starring Bill Skarsgård and Famke Janssen, who must face off in a hyper-violent dystopian hellscape.
Fresh off its world premiere at Sundance and bow at SXSW, BUFF is thrilled to bring the East Coast Premiere of Chris Nash’s ambient slasher In A Violent Nature to Boston film fans. A wild twist on the classic subgenre, In a Violent Nature forces an almost contemplative perspective through the eyes of a silent maniac as he slices his way through a Canadian forest full of teens.
BUFF is proud to present a triple-threat of Francophone wonders, starting with the New England Premiere of Ariane Louis-Seize’s utterly charming Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, which follows a young vampire who tries to creatively circumvent her ethical quandary with obtaining fresh blood. The festival will also host New England Premiere of Sébastien Vanicek’s eight-legged creature feature Infested, which follows the residents of a French social housing block in a battle of survival against legions of rapidly reproducing, murderous spiders. Come for the 1,000% nightmare fuel and discover why Vanicek has been tapped for the upcoming Evil Dead spinoff. Rounding out the trio is Belgium’s 2024 Oscar entry Omen, the visually stunning debut from Belgian Congolese rapper and visionary, Baloji. Deftly wielding magical realism, Baloji delves into an intersectional miasma of clashing identity, culture, and belief when a man returns to his Kinshasan homeland and experiences a nosebleed that triggers a communal schism.
On the thriller front, BUFF will host the New England Premiere of vengeance noir Femme from UK duo Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (2021’s Candyman sequel by Nia DaCosta) stars as a drag artist who, in the aftermath of a brutal attack, grapples with the complexities of trauma and urge towards revenge against his closeted attacker, played by George MacKay (2019’s 1917). Equally thrilling, with a dash of chilling, is South Korean filmmaker Jason Yu’s mysterious, haunting debut Sleep. Starring the late Lee Sun-kyun (2019 Oscar-sweeper, Parasite) and Jung Yu-mi (2016’s Train to Busan) as a pair of new parents beleaguered by the fatiguing pitfalls akin with this life stage, Sleep crafts a taut and tense atmosphere of dread that descends into madness. Speaking of dread and madness, BUFF is honored to celebrate hometown hero Joseph Mault and the World Premiere of his Cape Cod-set debut, Strange Kindness, a smoldering reckoning of the American dream that explores the outer limits of empathy against the backdrop of a tense manhunt.
Romance is in the air this spring with the New England Premieres of several-time BUFF alum Zach Clark’s (Little Sister) genre-mashing, body-snatching rom-com, The Becomers, narrated by Sparks frontman Russell Mael, and Kim Albright’s sci-fi exploration of love in a world where emotion is suppressed by literally removing one’s heart, With Love and a Major Organ starring Anna Maguire (2020’s Violation). Additional indie offerings include the East Coast Premiere of Nathan Tape’s wild Juggalo thrill ride, Off Ramp, and Amanda Nell Eu’s energetic Malaysian teen coming-of-age, lo-fi horror, Tiger Stripes.
We’ll also have our usual veritable bounty of shorts programming, celebrating the finest animation, transgressive horror, comedy, homegrown horror, and genre-inspired music videos.
A limited number of festival badges are available for purchase on the Brattle Theatre’s site.
Tickets will be on sale at www.brattlefilm.org and www.bostonunderground.org
Badgeholders will be able to make screening selections starting Friday March 8th, before tickets are released to the General Public on Monday March 11th.
