Dark Nights Film Fest is a spellbinding and pulse-pounding horror & dark genre film festival in Sydney, Australia, created by former festival director & programmer of A Night of Horror International Film Festival, Bryn Tilly.
In 2024, after fifteen years involvement with ANOH including several years programming short films and four years as its director & curator, Bryn Tilly launched his own film festival at Sydney’s legendary and iconic Ritz Cinemas.
Dark Nights Film Fest is a bold and thrilling showcase championing independent, emerging and established filmmakers from Australia and around the world, whilst also seeking to present, on occasion, select cult films from the past. International short films accompany the feature screenings, there is a dedicated Australian short film showcase, Q&As with featured filmmakers, a filmmakers’ discussion panel, and a physical media Movie Boutique, all within the perfect environment – the spacious, stylish, and well-appointed Ritz – for patrons and guests to hang out with budding and experienced creatives, pop culture enthusiasts, genre aficionados, and cult movie freaks and geeks.
The festival program reserves 90% of its short film slots and over 50% of its feature film slots for films submitted through the festival’s open call for entries. This commitment to the cold submission process is important to the festival and to the local and international community, providing a platform for talented, emerging, independent filmmakers, further enabling the discovery and much-needed exposure of bold and exciting new blood.
For the festival’s highly-anticipated 2025 event – Volume 2 – the festival is calling for films and unproduced screenplays in the following dark genres: horror, thriller, fantasy, noir, science fiction, action, western, war. Be it high-brow, low-brow, elevated, underground, arthouse, exploitation, animated, or maybe a hybrid!
A new experimental short film component, Nightmare Shards, is aimed at talented, emerging short content creators to encourage and inspire the next generation of filmmakers. See festival website’s “SUBMIT” page for complete content criteria before submitting to this category.
The festival includes a screenplay competition for unproduced feature and short film scripts to nurture and support the dark genre storytellers of tomorrow.
Submissions can be: features, documentaries, short films, webisodes, narrative music videos, unproduced feature film screenplays, unproduced short film screenplays.
For more information, visit Dark Nights Film Fest
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