The 22nd Annual Boston Underground Film Festival Returns to Cambridge March 23rd — 27th With Electric Line-Up Of Genre-Bending Films
Titles Include Focus Features’s Sundance stunner You Won’t Be Alone featuring Noomi Rapace; IFC Midnight’s harrowing creature-feature Hatching; Cannes supernatural sensation The Innocents; a double-dose of Gaspar Noé with Vortex and Lux Æterna – and so much more!
Wednesday, March 9th, 2022 — Cambridge, MA – New England cinephiles, rejoice! Spring festival season kicks off in a few short weeks as the 22nd annual Boston Underground Film Festival returns to Harvard Square, bringing with it five days of sublime cinervana to the Brattle Theatre from March 23rd through the 27th. This year’s program marks BUFF’s first physical festival since 2019 and promises a cinematic feast full of fierce folk horror, nordic nightmares, killer cockroaches, terrifying girl cults, psychological thrillers, and telekinetic chillers: All killer, no filler for the Northeast’s genre cinephiles.
Fresh off its world premiere at Sundance, BUFF is honoured to host the New England Premiere of Goran Stolevski’s haunting 19th-century Macedonian folk horror tale, You Won’t Be Alone, which sets a contemplative tone for the festival’s 22nd year with a dark meditation on what it means to be human through the eyes of a curious, cursed witch played, in part, by Noomi Rapace.
Casting a spotlight on Nordic genre cinema, BUFF is thrilled to host dual New England Premieres of Eskil Vogt’s electrifying fairytale The Innocents and Hanna Bergholm’s chilling feature debut, Hatching, which caps off the festival’s five day deep dive into curious and cruel revelations about the human condition.
The human psyche-excavation continues with a double-dose of Gaspar Noé, starting with the New England Premiere of his absolutely devastating Vortex, featuring an astonishing performance from the maestro, Dario Argento, in an unflinching, sobering chronicle of an ailing and ageing couple during their final days. When midnight strikes, gears shift to Noé’s sensory-shattering tale of witches and weirdness on a film shoot in the New England Premiere of Lux Æterna, starring Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Themes of isolation and frustration are further explored in Justin Kurzel’s staggering and eviscerating Nitram, which follows the life of a disturbed Australian man in the mid-80s who commits heinous acts that culminate in unthinkable tragedy. Caleb Landry Jones leads in this gripping portrait of nihilism and violence. Taking the exploration of violence and mental illness in a different direction, BUFF is proud to host the fresh-out-of-SXSW East Coast Premiere of Addison Heimann’s nightmarish debut Hypochondriac, which follows a Hispanic gay potter who has kept his dark past at bay until the day his bipolar mother re-enters his life as a series of inexplicable physical symptoms begin to manifest in his body.
Paranoia runs rampant through BUFF alum Chloe Okuno’s exquisite feature debut thriller, Watcher, which follows an isolated young American actress, newly relocated to Romania with her husband, who increasingly suspects that her neighbor is a serial killer. The powers of paranoia wreak havoc on a clique of pious Christian young women who take punitive action against the sinners in their midst in Brazilian filmmaker Anita Rocha da Silveira’s cult-classic-in-the-making Medusa, while a group of teen girls search for serenity in self-governance only to find fleeting freedom in Avalon Fast’s psychedelically sublime Honeycomb.
Lovers of weird world cinema take note: BUFF is bringing you the New England Premiere of the Afrofuturist/cyberpunk/Afropunk sci-fi musical of your dreams, Neptune Frost, written and co-directed by musician and poet Saul Williams and Rwandan playright and actress Anisia Uzeyman. This celestial, anti-capitalist, Black queer love story is unlike any film you’ve ever seen and demands and deserves your full attention. Rounding out BUFF’s music strand is the New England Premiere of Philipp Virus’ documentary crash-course on the sprawling history of semi-local legends and grunge gods Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr., as told by the band and their peers.
BUFF is beyond stoked to bring you the East Coast Premiere of the new restoration of 1987’s gross-out spectacular The Nest, which finds a New England town overrun by a cockroach experiment gone awry. And, for the first time ever, BUFF is expanding its kid-friendly fare with a special noon screening of The Secret of NIMH, in honor of this formative children’s masterwork on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.
We’ll also have our usual veritable bounty of shorts programming, co-presented this year by Final Draft (who will give all selected filmmakers a complimentary copy of Final Draft 12), celebrating the finest animation, transgressive horror, comedy, homegrown horror, genre-inspired music videos, plus a special screening showcasing local talent from the Weird Local Film Fest.
BUFF 2022 Shorts Lineup
The Dunwich Horrors
Rebirth dir. by Deniz Akyurek
Vile and Sweet dir. by Charles Vuolo
In Darkness dir. by Candace Janée and Federico Chiesa
Mairzy Doats dir. by Seth Chatfield
Thorns dir. by Sarah Wisner and Sean Temple
Sogno Blu dir. by Coco Roy
In the Mirrors dir. by Merlin Camozzi
A Family Affair dir. by Kyle Mangione-Smith
Forgive Us dir. by D.W. Hodges
Poor Glenna dir. by Jean-Paul DiSciscio
Trigger Warning 2022
Soggy Biscuit dir. by Emma Jesse
Hell Hole dir. by Gregory Shultz
Big Weekend Plans dir. by Tesha Kondrat
Monkey Love, Please Hold dir. by Greg Fox
Caro et Lux dir. by East Elliott, Ben Haven Taylor, Jonathan Heutmaker
Fop Twinks in the Rococo Gymnasium dir. by Sylvea Suydam
Squish dir. by Xavier Seron
A Girl’s Best Friend dir. by Alex Dona
Teenage Waterpolo
Tea Time dir. by Tara Price
Truck Dad dir. by Tamir Rawlings, Bradley Wilkinson
They Used to Call Me Crazy dir. by Jim McDonough
Bliss dir. by Sarah Gold
Meat Friend dir. by Izzy Lee
Johnny the Dime dir. by Joseph Blake Menzel
The Blood of the Dinosaurs dir. by Joseph Badon
Take Him Down dir. by Joe Raasch
Shitty Shitty Bang Bang dir. by Kevin James, Neil Cicierega, Ryan Murphy
A Puff Before Dying dir. by Michael Reich, Mike Pinkney
Polybius dir. by Alex Rouleau
Toshie the Nihilist dir. by Matthew Chozick
Inbetween Days
fulcrum dir. by Timothy David Orme
In the Water’s Wake dir. by Sarah Kennedy
Johnny Crow dir. by Jesse Gouchey and Xstine Cook
PORT dir. by Andrew Lehman
Hakkori dir. by Aya Yamasaki, Jason Brown
Pottero dir. by Lindsey Martin
Posted No Hunting dir. by Alisa Stern
Everybody Goes to the Hospital dir. by Tiffany Kimmel
Petal to the Metal dir. by Emily Pelstring
Lilly Goes to the Dogs dir. by The Bum Family
Argus dir. by Ethan Barrett
O, What Rice! O, What Beans! dir. by Jer Moran
Pancake Panic! dir. by David Filmore
Weird Local Film Fest Showcase
– curated by the Weird Local Film Fest
Downhill dir. by Erica Moriconi
Suspicious Baby dir. by John F. Quirk
Paint Master: Relearning to Paint after Painting College dir. by Triple Yeah Productions
MyFakeKid dir. by Nick Canton
The Second Coming dir. by Jesse Abbruzzese
Put a Stick in It dir. by Austin Kimmell
Cold Heartbreak 92 dir. by David Guerrera
The Narcissist dir. by Jim Warren
What’s He Doing In There? dir. by Peter Levine, Dylan Kaufman
“Let Bloom” Natti Vogel & Najva Sol dir. by Alex Ezorsky
Big Mug dir. by Cody Millett
Peen Zine dir. by Simeon Kondev
Squirrel dir. by Kevin Wetmore
Bryson Stryker Studios dir. by Connor Hanson, David Maybruck
Enablizer dir. by Stuart Roelke
The WLFFening dir. by Justin J. Mattarocchia
Why Won’t the Blood Stop Coming Out? Candice Black Hole, EP 1 dir. by Carly Lieberman
Sound + Vision
Keep Moving | Bronson dir. by StyleWar
The Prey | Monolink dir. by Páraic Mc Gloughlin
FEELS RIGHT | DARIUS & DUNE dir. by Jason YAN FRANCIS
War | Idles dir. by Will Dohrn
Don’t Lose Your Head | Ruby Bones dir. by Brian Lonano
Saku | BICEP dir. by David Bertram
Butterflies | Skrillex, Starrah & Four Tet dir. by Ben Strebel
Colors and Shapes | Mac Miller dir. by Sam Mason
Incomplete | Ashkan Kooshanejad dir. by Dalena Tran
INVISIBLE | NTO dir. by Jean-Charles Charavin
Dream Weapon | Genghis Tron dir. by Matthew Newman
Moth GF | James Gameboy dir. by Cody Samuel McCracken
Fearless Woman | Pat Robitaille dir. by Aya Yamasaki & Jason Brown
Piece of My Mind | Broods dir. by Kristofski
Pay Mi In Cash | Kaleo Sansaa dir. by Justyna Obasi
Point and Kill | Little Simz & Obongjayar dir. by Ebeneza Blanche
Sad Day | FKA twigs dir. by Hiro Murai
Feel Away | Slowthai dir. by Oscar Hudson
Una Furtiva Lagrima (MeTube 3) | August Schram dir. by Daniel Moshel
My High | Disclosure, Slowthai & Aminé dir. by Simon Cahn
Paper Cup | Real Estate dir. by Nick Roney
Step-Grandma | Salvatore Ganacci dir. by Vedran Rupic
Mesmerize | Duck Sauce dir. by Keith Schofield
All for You | Welshy dir. by Arthur Studholme