The worlds biggest LGBTQ+ horror film festival returns to the airways this June as the award winning Soho Horror Film Festival slices out the online edition of it’s 6th annual celebration of queer horror: Sohome Horror Pride. This year, the festival presents a massive 10 feature films and 25 short films from around the world and showcasing the best in LGBTQ+ filmmaking.
Taking place thematically over the Friday the 13th of June weekend, they’ll be putting the camp in Camp Crystal Lake with a festival strand focus on “Queering the Slasher”! If you come to horror for ridiculously cool kills, then look no further than Tim Connolly’s BLACK THETA; a gnarly flaming love-letter to 00s post modern slashers, the HOMOcidal hoot will be opening the festival with its European Premiere. Keeping the body count and body positivity high will be the International Premiere of THE BROOKLYN BUTCHER, a sleazy portmanteau that’s like if Abel Ferrara made a bear-filled version of Paris, Je T’aime. And the cabin in the woods killer trope finds feminine fury and vigilante vindication from Mary Beth McAndrews in the wickedly fun but terrifyingly prescient BYSTANDERS.
And if you think you’ve seen all the Scream-inspired films out there, you clearly haven’t seen THE PREMIERE. From writer, director, and star Sam Pezzullo, this mockumentary of a documentary of a musical of a film finds one hilariously narcissistic SCREAM fanatic taking a stab at stardom as he seeks to make a Broadway smash out of Ghostface. Doubling down on the SCREAM fandom, the festival will host a live edition of the Horror Queer’s Podcast, where the inimitable hosts Trace and Joe will hold a live commentary of SCREAM 3 and finally settle the score: are Gail Weather’s bangs really that bad?
The festival will also host two exclusive live events as part of it’s slasher focus: ‘FriGay The 13th’ a tongue in cheek journey through the queerest moments in slasher history, and for the 40th anniversary of the “gayest horror ever made” A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2, there will be a very special homage to and revision of the film featuring guests and surprises in the unmissable Jesse’s Revenge.
UK Premiere’s come thick and fast with the Fiona Douriff starring mind-bending sapphic sci-fi noir PSYCHONAUT, a poetic and romantic sail into a vampire death cult from Aaron Pagniano with their feature debut SUNSET ON THE RIVER STYX, and the ghosts of both hereditary fears and ancestral folklore collid in Marwan Mokbel’s haunting and healing THE JUDGMENT, made with a terrifying bravery from Egypt.
Also screening at the festival, portmanteau hits the road in Parker Brennon’s chilling compendium of campfire fear HAUNTOLOGY, a low-budget horror director gets lost in his work with the meta-textual nightmare THERE’S A ZOMBIE OUTSIDE from Michael Varrati. Closing the event are festival favourites Kaye Adelaide and Mariel Sharpe with their feature debut THE REBRAND, a hilarious and jump-filled evisceration of social media influence culture that you’ll be left quoting all year.
Festival director Mitch Harrod had to say: “Times may feel like the apocalypse with rights being revoked, sponsors jumping ship, books being banned and narratives being erased, but let the horror history books set the record straight: queer is here- always has and always will be. It is an honour always to get to stand with the forefront of the genre and especially platform so many incredible filmmakers and voices from our LGBTQ+ creatives, as well as always provide a safe space for our queer community. The festival will never not stand proud with that at its dark bleeding heart”.
Sohome Horror Pride is an online film festival taking place from 13-15th June. For accessibility and inclusivity, the festival is run on a Pay-What-You-Can price basis, with a recommended donation of £50 to help cover the costs of the festival. In addition, a proportion of all donations will be given to Not A Phase, a charity that provides support for Trans, Non-Binary & Gender diverse adults across the UK. Much of the festival will be accessible globally, but certain screenings will be geo-blocked to the UK.
Soho Horror Fest can be followed @SohoHorror on Instagram and X. Full Information can be found at WWW.SOHOHORRORFEST.COM
Mo Moshaty is an acclaimed horror writer, lecturer, and producer whose work combines visceral storytelling with the psychological insight of her Cognitive Behavioral Therapy background. She has lectured internationally, including as a keynote speaker at Nightmares from Monkeypaw: A Jordan Peele Symposium (Prairie View A&M), No Return: A Yellowjackets Symposium (Horror Studies BAFSS Sig), The Whole Damn Swarm: Celebrating 30 Years of Candyman (University of California), and with the Centre for the History of the Gothic (University of Sheffield). Mo has also presented at the BFI, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and Final Girls Berlin Film Festival’s Brain Binge on women’s trauma in horror cinema, Cine-Excess on The Creepy Kid Horror Subgenre and Mother/Daughter Trauma in Horror, and Romancing the Gothic on Cosmic Horror’s Havoc on The Body Electric Her short film, 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror, won the 2022 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Short Film. As a core producer with Nyx Horror Collective, Mo co-created the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Fest and partnered with Shudder in 2021 and 2022, while also establishing a Stowe Story Labs fellowship supporting women creatives over 40+ in horror. A member of the Black Women in Horror Class of 2023 and featured in 160 Black Women in Horror, Mo’s short fiction appears in A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales (Brigid’s Gate Press) and 206 Word Stories (Bag O’ Bones Press). Her debut novella, Love the Sinner, was released July 5, 2024, with Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment released in October 2025. The first of her five-volume non-fiction series, The Annex of the Obscure: The Afterlife, will be released in 2027 from Tenebrous Press. As the Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and founder of Mourning Manor Media, Mo champions marginalized voices in horror. Under her leadership, NightTide plans to launch a film festival in 2028, furthering her mission to reshape the genre through inclusivity and representation.
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