The Biggest Edition of Poland’s Scariest Film Festival
Are you ready to be seriously scared? From October 22–31, the 12th edition of Splat!FilmFest will take place across ten cities in Poland. Loud, fearless, and uncompromising, Splat!FilmFest is a celebration of contemporary genre cinema and one of the world’s leading events devoted to bold, convention-defying films – movies that can terrify you to the bone and, sometimes, simply take your breath away.
Horror, thrillers, science fiction, and films designed to provoke powerful reactions are our specialty. This year’s festival will be the biggest in Splat!FilmFest history, with nearly 100 titles in the program. The vast majority are fresh discoveries handpicked from the world’s most prestigious film festivals, alongside hot European and Polish premieres of films you simply cannot see anywhere else. Nowhere else will you find such a dense concentration of festival gems that have helped define genre cinema around the world this year.
And that is not just festival hype. Straight from the Cannes Film Festival comes the Polish premiere of “Roma Elastica,” the highly anticipated new film from visionary risk-taker Bertrand Mandico, starring Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard as a fading movie star on a film set in a nightmarish, surreal version of Rome. From the Berlin International Film Festival come the Japanese film “AnyMart,” a bitter, pitch-black and deliciously macabre comedy, and the Indonesian horror film “Sleep No More.”
From the Toronto International Film Festival, we are bringing our audience the razor-sharp thriller “Kick On.” From the Tribeca Festival comes, among others, the fascinating documentary “Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders,” which tells the story of the making of – and backlash against – the Al Pacino film “Cruising” within the queer community. And from the Locarno Film Festival comes “Bloody Tennis,” a horror film set at a tennis academy where the players are willing to kill for victory – and for a good set.
Legends of Cinema at Splat!FilmFest
This year’s program is bursting with legendary names and rising stars of contemporary genre cinema.
At the invitation of Splat!FilmFest, Julie Corman will come to Poland – producer, wife, and longtime collaborator of the brilliant master of independent and genre filmmaking, Roger Corman, who received an Honorary Academy Award for his lifetime achievements.
Julie Corman now oversees her husband’s creative legacy. During his 70-year career, Roger Corman directed nearly 60 films and produced around 500. Julie Corman herself has produced nearly 40 titles, including Martin Scorsese’s celebrated “Boxcar Bertha.”
Her visit will be accompanied by a retrospective of Roger Corman’s films. In this way, Splat!FilmFest will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the maestro’s birth, an occasion also marked this year by the Cannes and Venice film festivals, as well as New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Also coming to Warsaw is George Mihalka, director of the cult slasher “My Bloody Valentine,” which we will screen to celebrate the film’s 45th anniversary.
The New York comedy collective Simple Town will also attend Splat!FilmFest for the premiere of their film “Big Break,” an outrageous, wildly funny, and bloody comedy in which they also appear on screen.
Other filmmakers joining us for the 12th edition include Zoe Berriatúa, director of the brilliant “Buffet Libre,” as well as the filmmakers behind the British found-footage horror film “Abandoned.”
A number of filmmakers will also celebrate the Warsaw premieres of their work together with Splat!FilmFest audiences, including Agata Trzebuchowska, whose daring directorial debut “Sick” will be presented at the festival; Julia Kowalski, director of the disturbing Polish-French horror film “Her Will Be Done”; and the filmmakers behind the extraordinary Kashubian-language Polish horror film “ÒPI,” one of the most eagerly anticipated Polish productions of the season.
RZA, Quentin Tarantino, Danny DeVito, and More
Splat!FilmFest will also host the first Polish screening of “One Spoon of Chocolate,” the latest film directed by RZA, leader of the Wu-Tang Clan. The film draws on the tradition of 1970s blaxploitation cinema, and the concept impressed Quentin Tarantino so much that the award-winning filmmaker came on board as an executive producer.
We will also present the premiere of “Drag,” a comedy thriller produced by Academy Award nominee Danny DeVito, featuring John Stamos – best known and loved as Uncle Jesse from “Full House” – in a very different, decidedly sleazy role.
The program also includes “Chili Finger,” starring John Goodman and Bryan Cranston, as well as the premiere of “Grind,” a deliciously funny and horrifying horror anthology led by genre icon and scream queen Barbara Crampton.
And then there is “The Last Temptation of Becky,” in which its fearless, bullet-dodging heroine travels to Poland to stop a neo-Nazi group led by a character played by Neil Patrick Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”).
Can’t Come to Splat!? Splat! Will Come to You
Responding to demand from audiences outside Warsaw, Splat!FilmFest is heading to other cities as well.
During the festival, “No Rest for the Wicked,” “Big Break,” and the Polish film “ÒPI” will also screen outside Warsaw in nine additional cities across Poland: Białystok (Kino Forum), Bydgoszcz (Kino Orzeł), Gdynia (Gdyńskie Centrum Filmowe), Katowice (Kino Kosmos), Kraków (Kino Mikro), Łódź (Kino Pałacowe), Poznań (Kino Charlie), Szczecin (Kino Pionier), and Wrocław (Dolnośląskie Centrum Filmowe).
The main edition of the festival will, as always, take place at Kinoteka in Warsaw, which for ten days will turn into a rift in our dimension. Selected screenings will be available with audio description.
Over more than a decade, Splat!FilmFest has grown into one of the leading genre film festivals in the world. Its audiences have already seen around a thousand films and met stars they had previously known only from the screen.
In 2022, the American outlet Dread Central named Splat!FilmFest among the best horror film festivals in the world, while MovieMaker Magazine included it on its list in 2020.
We are determined to make every new edition bigger than the last – and to surpass our audience’s expectations along the way. We exist to scare you and make you think.
Splat!FilmFest was founded by Monika Stolat, who serves as its Artistic Director and Producer.