Sinister Horror Film Festival Announces the Official Selection for its 2025 Edition

Mexico City, November 2025. — The Sinister Horror Film Festival proudly unveils the Official Selection for its 2025 edition, a celebration of global horror cinema and storytelling that transcends fear and transforms it into art. This year’s festival will take place on December 13–14, 2025, at Cinemanía Plaza Loreto in Mexico City, as well as through its official online platform, bringing audiences around the world closer to the dark heart of cinema.

The Official Selection 2025 brings together a powerful collection of works that challenge, disturb, and redefine what horror means in the modern era. From atmospheric features to daring shorts and visionary scripts, each selected piece embodies the Sinister spirit — where terror becomes ritual, rebellion, and revelation.

The official categories for this year’s competition include:
Feature Film, Short Film, Short Animation, Screenwriting (Feature and Short), Music Video, and Photography.

A total of 44 awards will be presented across these categories, honoring exceptional achievements in direction, performance, cinematography, sound design, editing, writing, and visual composition. The festival’s highest honor, the Sinister Award, will be granted to the Best Feature Film and Best Short Film — a handcrafted symbol of distinction that embodies the festival’s spirit of artistic excellence. More than a trophy, the award stands as a declaration: that horror, when executed with vision and purpose, remains one of the purest forms of cinema.

This year’s lineup features an extraordinary range of voices and styles, with selected works hailing from Mexico, Taiwan, the Republic of Korea, the United States, Canada, Portugal, Panama, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine, Costa Rica, Germany, Ecuador, Austria, Saudi Arabia, Finland, Switzerland, France, China and Sweden.

Festival Director Fernando Perezgil emphasizes that Sinister “was not created as a marketplace, but as a declaration — a home for creators who understand that horror is not a gimmick, but one of the oldest and most powerful forms of storytelling known to humanity.”

Audiences attending Sinister Horror Film Festival 2025 will witness two days of screenings, special presentations, and recognition of emerging and established voices in horror cinema. The festival continues its commitment to connecting creators and audiences who dare to look where others turn away.

The Official Selection list by category is presented below:

OFFICIAL SELECTION 2025

Feature Film

  1. Archai – Dir. Eugenio Villani (Italy)
  2. Severed Road – Dir. Benjamin L. Brown (United States)
  3. Stalker Jane – Dir. Roger Glenn Hill (United States)
  4. The Behemoth – Dir. Kai Edmund Bogatzki (Germany)
  5. Why, If – Dir. Soo Sung Lee (Republic of Korea)

Short Film

  1. Ad Meata – Dir. Carlo Settembrini (Italy)
  2. And… Do You Know Where Your Cat Is? – Angel Roberto Esponda Hernández (Mexico)
  3. Bath Bomb – Dir. Colin G Cooper (Canada)
  4. Bloody Glamping – Dir. Yannic Solis (Mexico)
  5. Bokeh – Dir. Ivan Salcedo (United States)
  6. Brand New Cadillac – Dir. Sophia Tatum, Stacy Haiduk (United States)
  7. Burn – Dir. Judson Vaughan (United Kingdom)
  8. Carousel – Dir. Christopher Kosakowski (United States)
  9. Cassandra Insköld’s Last Word – Dir. Dan Asenlund (Sweden)
  10. Fatal Harmony – Dir. Nick Noyes (United States)
  11. Fred – Dir. Ernesto Gutiérrez (Costa Rica)
  12. Goodnight Sweetheart – Dir. Kathrin Told (Austria)
  13. In The Name Of… – Dir. Marcos Muñoz Flores (Mexico)
  14. Late Night Live – Yiming Lu (China)
  15. Like No Place – Dir. Dominic Czarnota (United States)
  16. Mamá – Dir. Ramón Medina Orellana (Mexico)
  17. Moral Hazard – Dir. Luuk Audenaerde (Netherlands)
  18. Parasomnia – Dir. Daniel Noblom (Spain)
  19. Pimple – Dir. Fernando Alle (Portugal)
  20. Pulchra – Dir. Fernando Rosales (Mexico)
  21. Rear Road – Dir. Roberto Montalbo (Spain)
  22. Speira – Dir. José Cruz Carrasco (Mexico)
  23. The Babysitter Murders: Timing’s Off – Dir. Orin Black (United States)
  24. The Barn – Dir. Michael Carlo Allen (Italy)
  25. The Beneath – Dir. Lisette Vlassak (Netherlands)
  26. The Black Silence – Dir. C.A. Cooper (United Kingdom)
  27. The Boy and Pitaya – Dir. Da Yu Hong (Taiwan)
  28. The Clayman – Dir. Bryan Wesley Lewandowski (Panama, United States)
  29. The Harvest – Dir. David Barrera, Manuel Carballo (Spain)
  30. The Stranded – Dir. Sergi Páez (Spain)
  31. Umbra – Dir. Pablo Otero (Spain)
  32. Unravelling – Dir. Aimie Willemse (United Kingdom)
  33. Wicca: Jezabel – Dir. Alan Godina (Mexico)

Short Animation

  1. Dagon – Dir. Paolo Gaudio (Italy)
  2. Infiniteness Of Nostalgia – Dir. Alejandro Najera (Mexico)
  3. The Voiceless Man – Dir. Julian Stern (United States)

Music Video

  1. 6-6-69 – Dir. Tutus Adi Pambudi (United States)
  2. Dawn Fades – Drugs – Dir. Danial J. Smith (United States)
  3. Dreams – Dir. Valentyn Korolkov (Ukraine)
  4. Dying Melody – Dir. Corentin Lecoq (Switzerland)
  5. Glistening Benevolence – Dir. Matt Cargill (United Kingdom)
  6. Grayshapes – Blade – Dir. Ihor Zhebko (Ukraine)
  7. La Bruja – Dir. Jay Carney (Mexico)
  8. Mama Doom- Man Parts – Dir. Anne Hickey, David Mayer, Krystal Ancona (United States)
  9. Mater Tenebrarum – Gehenna – Dir. Gabriel Alcón (Spain)
  10. New Horror Icon – Dir. Luc Chiefarep (France)
  11. Omar, Pray for the Prophet – Bader al-Hakami (Saudi Arabia)
  12. Release the Hounds – Dir. Bil Richardson (United States)
  13. Sinners In The City – VEXXD – Dir. Adam McHattie (United Kingdom)
  14. Veiled in Shadows – Dir. Sami Ylönen (Finland)
  15. Walk With Me Through The Fire – The Curse of KK Hammond – Dir. K.K. Hammond (United Kingdom)

The categories of Screenwriting and Photography will be announced on Monday, November 17, 2025.

Sinister Horror Film Festival 2025
Cinemanía Plaza Loreto, Mexico City
December 13–14, 2025
http://www.sinisterfilmfest.com

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