Night Visions 2017: Killer Female Directors Lead Genre Fest Lineup with PREVENGE, RAW, XX and More

The superbly-curated Night Visions International Film Festival has announced the lineup for its spring edition, which is led by Prevenge, Raw and X in the "Killer Female Directors" section.

The biggest genre festival in Scandinavia takes over the lovely city of Helsinki, Finland from April 19-23. The temperatures may be chilly this time of year -- I attended a couple of years ago and had to bundle up heavily! -- but the films should provide all the heat that is needed.

In addition to the aforementioned trio, all highly-recommended and all making their Finnish debuts, Jonna Nilsson's Drip Drop, from Sweden, will screen; it's described as an original take on the monster in the house theme.

Charlotte Brodthagen's Lau & Laudrup, from Denmark, is one of the festival's world premieres. It tells the story of "two Bosnian immigrant siblings in the midst of a zombie outbreak somewhere outside Copenhagen," according to the official verbiage.

Here's the balance of the lineup, with descriptions provided by the festival:

The Mentors: Kings of Sleze Rockumentary (USA 2017) also fits the bill of Killer Female Directors, though its director April Jones is not dealing with fiction. This Night Visions World Premiere provides an in-depth, feature-length look at the infamous "rape rock" group of nearly mythical proportions.

Other highlights of the festival's documentary selection include Marty Langford's Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four (USA 2016), Alexandre O. Philippe's Sundance hit 78/52 (USA 2017) and Dominik Graf & Johannes Sievert's Berlin Film Fest Panorama entry Open Wounds - A Journey Through German Genre Films (Germany 2017). All three now have their Scandinavian premieres on the big screen at the festival.

The vibrant genre cinema scene of Argentina is also presented through two Scandinavian premieres. Still Life director Gabriel Grieco's Hypersomnia (2016) is a modern, multi-layered take on the almost forgotten subgenre of women-in-prison movies. Sebastian Perillo's directorial debut Amateur (Argentina 2016) is a unique serial killer thriller with distinctly De Palmaesque flavours.

Among its World Premiere shorts, Night Visions also presents the Nightsatan and the Loops of Doom auteur CHRZU's latest Carlotta Moore adventure The Consequence (Finland 2017), Ramin Sohrab's highly anticipated action extravaganza Viulu (Finland 2017) and the H.P. Lovecraft inspired Sound from the Deep (Finland 2017), directed by Joonas Allonen and Antti Laakso.

On the retro side, one of the definite highlights of the lineup includes a retrospective of the legendary U.S. genre filmmaker Gary Sherman. Sherman's Death Line (a.k.a. Raw Meat, UK 1972), Dead & Buried (USA 1981) and Vice Squad (USA/UK 1982) are all now seen for the first time ever in their uncut form on the silver screen in Finland.

See the full festival lineup here.

The ticket sales of all screenings of the Night Visions International Film Festival will start on Friday, March 31, 2017 at www.nightvisions.info