Genre-loving audiences of Lima! Your horror and fantasy cravings will soon be fulfilled. Starting on February 14 and running a full five days, Insólito, Peru’s first and only festival entirely devoted to all things genre cinema, opens shop in the National Library (Mario Vargas Llosa Auditorium).
The five-day event starts with a darkly comedic double bill that puts the focus on Caye Casas and Albert Pintó. RIP gets things going with a funeral service that doesn’t proceed as planned while the duo’s feature film sensation Matar a Dios ramps up family tensions with a visit from a cruel god.
The inaugural edition treats its patrons to a total of 42 films, which includes a short and feature film competition as well as a sidebar that honors some of the genre’s fallen heroes with retro screenings (among which audiences can find Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but also Ulli Lommel’s Tenderness of the Wolves). The closing night honors belong to Gillespie and Kostanski’s The Void, a creature feature brimming with Eldritch hijinks.
Read on for an official press release below, and discover a wild collection of gems the Insólito Festival de Cine de Terror y Fantasía has gathered from all corners of the world.
INSOLITO HORROR & FANTASY FILM FESTIVAL LAUNCHES ITS FIRST EDITION
Insólito Horror & Fantasy Film Festival (Insólito: Festival de Cine de Terror y Fantasía), the first Peruvian festival devoted to genre film, will take place at the Mario Vargas Llosa Auditorium in the National Library, in Lima, from 14 to 18 February.
Horror and fantasy are two of the most popular genres in Peru, a regular fixture in local cinemas. With so many film festivals taking place in the country, it was about time we had one dedicated to these types of movies, the ones most of us grew up with and helped our imaginations run wild.
Thanks to new filmmaking voices and styles, most of them coming from the indie world, horror and fantasy have lately gone through a reinvention of sorts. Audiences are now eager to discover these new film voices, and Insólito is committed to bringing them to light.
The first edition has seven films competing for Best Feature Film, while 21 other films will compete for Best Short. A three-person jury for each category will decide the winners. There will also be recognition for Best Actor and Actress, Best Director and Best Artistic Achievement.
It’s worth noting that most of the films in competition are premiering in Peru for the first time. They are as follows:
FEATURE FILM COMPETITION
Argentina
Hypersomnia (Gustavo Garzón)
Brazil
Astaroth (Larissa Anzoategui)
Pazucus: Island of Vomit And Despair (Gurcius Gewdner)
Chile
The Night (Inti Carrizo-Ortiz)
Mexico
I Wish, I Wish (Eduardo M. Clorio)
Peru
El Cuadro Siniestro (Dante Rubio)
The Light On The Hill (Ricardo Velarde)
SHORT FILM COMPETITION
Argentina
Calculations (Mariano Biasin)
¡No! (Pedro Maccarone, Max Franco)
Onión (Juan Pablo Zaramella)
Belgium
A Chacun sa Malediction (Lorène Yavo)
Brazil
Cocoons of Outer Space (Joel Caetano)
Specimen 53 (Leonardo Prioli)
China
Implied (Qi Yao, QinNan Li)
Colombia
Rever (Jair Miranda Acero)
France
Le Jour Où Maman Est Devenue Un Monstre (Joséphine Hopkins)
Red Tale (Natacha Thomas)
Mexico
Death Ranch (Jorge Juárez Gutiérrez)
El Placer de la Carne (Oliver Izquierdo)
Pacgirl (Jaime Peña García)
Netherlands
Ringo Rocket Star And His Song For Yuri Gagarin (Rene Nuijens)
Peru
Guerrilla Gore (Rafael Arévalo)
Intocable (Diego Mezarina)
Suspenso o Sorpresa (Daniel Bernal)
Spain
Ángel Caído (Fran Parra)
Bye Bye Baby (Pablo S. Pastor)
It’s Tight, But Hardly Chokes (David Pérez Sañudo)
United States
Mauvaises Tetes (Bad Heads) (Rebekah Fieschi)
The Festival also includes a sampling of shorts from the most recent edition of the Inusual Film Festial in Buenos Aires. Its goal of “exploring the unknown aspects of national and international filmmaking” and “meeting the expectations of those seeking a different film experience” is in line with the spirit of Insólito.
INUSUAL FILM FESTIVAL
Argentina
Alguien en la Casa (Ezequiel Vega)
Mensaje (Sergio Marzano)
Prisionera de la Eternidad (Gabriel Piñeiro)
Realidad del Inconsciente en Soledad (Ariana Lafferriere, Carla Sofía Ostiglia)
Brazil
AGS – Agence Générale du S… (Rodney Borges)
Opening Night honors go to black comedy Killing God, from Spanish directing duo Albert Pintó and Caye Casas; it won the Audience Award at the latest edition of the Sitges Film Festival. Both directors, as well as actress Itziar Castro, were also recognized by the Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre Fest last year. The film is preceded by Pintó and Casas’ short RIP, winner of the Best Short Film award at Sitges.
Meanwhile, Closing Night goes to Astron-6 members Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski’s The Void, a tribute to both 80s cinema and H.P. Lovecraft.
The festival will also pay tribute to the iconic genre directors we lost last years via screenings of their most well-known films. They are American directors George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs); Italian Umberto Lenzi (Cannibal Ferox); from Germany, Ulli Lommel (Tenderness of the Wolves); and Japan’s Seijun Suzuki (Zigeunerweisen).
With its first edition, Insólito’s goal is to become a premier festival for genre cinema in the region, similar to Rojo Sangre in Buenos Aires or Fantaspoa in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
It’s also an opportunity to rediscover and reevaluate horror and fantasy cinema, two genres that, despite their proven popularity, are usually seen as disposable and with no depth. In spite of this, these are movies that not only entertain, but can also reflect different aspects of a particular society better than most other film; that’s where its continuing popularity comes from. These are the movies that Insólito wants to bring to Peruvian audiences who want to be amazed and frightened at the same time.