The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Announces 2018 Award Winners!

Press Release:

The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is thrilled to announce our 2018 award winners, following their biggest year yet. The third edition stretched from October 11th to the 18th (more days than ever!) and packed in over 30 features, six uniquely curated short blocks, and special events across multiple Brooklyn venues.

The festival was bookended by two sold-out screenings at the Nitehawk Cinema, opening with the NY Premiere of Yann Gonzalez’s KNIFE + HEART and closing with the North American Premiere of Perry Blackshear’s haunting THE RUSALKA. Our distinguished program boasted more premieres than ever before, and brought guests from around the world to enrich the cinematic experience for our dynamic audience.

“Watching our festival grow in ways we never could have imagined is such an exciting experience. Enormous thank you to the entire staff and volunteers, you are a dream-team and congratulations to our award winners. We’ll be back again next year bigger and better than ever before!” says festival director Justin Timms.

This year the festival explored a new partnership with with The Future Of Film is Female to present the East Coast Premiere of Danishka Esterhazy’s feminist dystopic sci-fi satire LEVEL 16, while returning partners Brooklyn Fireproof Stages and NewFest came on to present centerpiece film STARFISH and SLAYED, our new block of LGBT shorts, respectively. BHFF welcomed Dread Central as an official media sponsor and launched the first live version of NYC critic Matt Donato’s special series Drinking With the Dread at Videology, and programmed a marathon of delectable ‘80s horror-slashers presented by Maker’s Mark, hosted by critic/writer Michael Gingold and immersed with the Brooklyn launch of his newest book, Ad Nauseam: Newsprint Nightmares from the 1980s.

The festival featured four world premieres for year three, including IFC Midnight’s WELCOME TO MERCY, cursed film ANTRUM: THE DEADLIEST FILM EVER MADE, Luke Jaden’s hotly anticipated feature debut BOO!, starring MOONLIGHT’s Jaden Piner with cast and crew attendance, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new restoration of clown-killer slasher BLOOD HARVEST. Drunk Education held session at the fest once again for BAD RELIGION, their boozy take on religious horror, while the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies devoted its annual class with us to the niche genre of made-for-TV horror with Big Scares on the Small Screen, led by esteemed instructor Amanda Reyes. The fest offered audiences our first-ever secret screening, the SXSW hit PERFECT, and a live edition of Amanda McLoughlin and Julia Schifini’s Spirits podcast, focused on NYC legends and monsters.

Film guests for 2018 included ANTRUM dirs. Michael Laicini & David Amito; director Luke Jaden, screenwriter Diane Michelle and more for the dark family drama creeper BOO!; Yedidya Gorsetman and his team from locally made spotlight feature EMPATHY INC.; Canadian director Danishka Esterhazy with her poignant feminist satire LEVEL 16; modernized teen slasher PARTY HARD DIE YOUNG’s helmer Dominik Hartl, all the way from Austria; Maurice Compte and director Eddie Alcazar for our secret screening of PERFECT; A.T. White, the UK filmmaker and musician behind STARFISH; serial killer mystery THE CLOVEHITCH KILLER’s director Duncan Skiles and actress Samantha Mathis; director Perry Blackshear and all cast for closing night’s THE RUSALKA; and, last but not least, director (and MONSTER SQUAD star) Andre Gower with producer Henry Darrow McComas for the documentary WOLFMAN’S GOT NARDS.

This year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival juries were composed of:

2018 FEATURES JURY

David Ninh (Director of Publicity, Kino Lorber)

Elinor Lewy (Co-Director, Final Girls Berlin Film Festival)

Jason Zinoman (Journalist, NY Times, Author, SHOCK VALUE)

2018 HEAD TRIP FEATURES JURY

Caryn Coleman (Director of Programming/Special Projects, Nitehawk Cinema)

Rebecca Pahle (Journalist, Film Journal International)

Jasper Basch (President, Cartilage Films)

2018 SHORTS JURY

Jenn Wexler (Director, Producer, Glass Eye Pix)

Kyle Greenberg (Theatrical Marketing Manager, Gunpowder & Sky)

Loren Hammonds (Senior Programmer, Tribeca Film Festival)

Horror Features:

•    Best Feature: Cannibal Club

•    Best Director: Cannibal Club – Guto Parente

•    Best Actor: Possum – Sean Harris

•    Best Actress: Knife + Heart – Vanessa Paradis

•    Best Cinematography: Possum – Kit Fraser

•    Best Editing: Antrum – UNKNOWN (David and Mike to accept the award on the original filmmakers behalf)

•    Best Score: Boo! – Jon Natchez

•    Best Sound Design: Luz – Jonas Lux

•    Special Jury Award: Possum – supporting actor Alun Armstrong

Head Trip:

•    Best Feature: Family

•    Best Director: The Rusalka – Perry Blackshear

•    Best Actor: The Rusalka – Evan Dumouchel

•    Best Actress: CAM – Madeline Brewer

•    Best Cinematography: Holiday – Nadim Carlsen

•    Best Editing: The Rusalka – Perry Blackshear

•    Best Sound Design: Starfish – Multiple

•    Special Jury Award: Production Design and Set Decorator on CAM

Audience Award:

•    Audience Award: CAM

Shorts:

•    Best Short Film: Acid

•    Best Director: Helsinki Mansplaining Massacre – Ilja Rautsi

•    Best Actor: Acid – Sofian Khammes

•    Best Actress: The Sermon – Molly Casey

•    Best Cinematography: Hair Wolf – Charlotte Hornsby

•    Best Editing: Milk – Catherine Villeminot & Santiago Menghini

•    Best Effects: Special Day – Ayush Jain

•    Best Score: Le otto dita della morte – Frank Rideau & Orgasmo Sonore

•    Best Sound Design: The Girl in the Snow – Luca Brügger & Dario Voirol

•    Best Locations: Voyager

•    Special Jury Award: Welcome to Bushwick