Offscreenings

Mid-1980s Britain. Enid is a film censor who tries to remain objective about the brutal sex and violence she has to watch for work, but one slasher movie in particular triggers a long-buried childhood trauma, and the horror begins to creep into her everyday life. A blood-spattered celebration of the video nasty era!

A cardiologist, emotionally paralysed since the tragic death of his wife, strays into the orbit of a dominatrix, whose extreme BDSM skills help him come to terms with his bereavement. Deadpan Finnish humour and genuine emotions help make the sometimes wince-making consensual torture go down a treat.

In the wake of a pandemic, a scientist sets out to join his ex-girlfriend in the woods where she has been studying fungal symbiosis, but he and his guide are waylaid by sinister forces. The director of "Kill List" and "A Field in England" serves up an intoxicating brew of folk horror and hallucinatory eco-madness.

Hideki presents himself on his blog as a perfect family man, but the reality will blow your mind in Tetsuya Nakashima’s demented supernatural thriller. Poltergeist action, a sneaky demon, gratuitous dismemberment, and a full quota of jaw-dropping moments lead to the most spectacular exorcism you’ve ever seen.

Jean-Christophe Folly gives a fearless (and often fearlessly naked) performance as a troubled Parisian in a dead-end job who can become invisible, but keeps his ability a secret - until, one day, he finds he can no longer control it. This affecting social realist fable explores the downside of having a superpower.

An escaped buffalo wreaks havoc in an Indian village, stirring up primal instincts in the menfolk as they compete to catch the beast. This study of toxic testosterone at its most unhinged pelts you with astonishing music and imagery on its way towards an unforgettably hellish climax.

A Soviet cosmonaut survives a reentry malfunction that kills his colleague - thanks to the alien parasite he has brought back to Earth in his esophagus! A young psychiatrist is ordered to see if she can find a way of separating them, but everyone has something to hide in this deft slice of Cold War body horror.

Cinema event of the decade, or folie de grandeur? Ten years in the making, Russian filmmaker Khrzhanovsky’s controversial multimedia project unleashed over 10,000 non-professional actors in 1960s period costume in a replica of a USSR secret research facility. From this came a dozen films screened in a 24/7 art installation premiered in Paris in 2019; this two-part feature offers a taste of that experience. A brilliantly immersive recreation of the Soviet lifestyle turns tense as a KGB apparatchik and his thugs play mindgames with the scientists in a deadpan satire tackling science, religion, and nationalism.

A New Yorker pays for his brother’s medical treatment by laying cables through the woods. Egged on by jaunty corporate messaging ("Challenge your status quo!"), he finds himself competing with robots, while other workers hint at dark conspiracies. This low-tech sci-fi parable skewers the gig economy with deadpan wit.

In 1973, Romero was hired to make a PSA about elder abuse, but the result was deemed too upsetting to be released, and the film was only rediscovered after the director’s death. An elderly gent’s day at the funfair turns into an unmistakably Romero-esque nightmare when he is ignored, exploited and mistreated.

Ballard meets Beckett as chaos infiltrates the lives of ordinary men in three interlocking stories that unfurl amid the crumbling tower blocks of a pan-European dystopia. Moya’s debut, set to a doomy synth score, stirs corpse collectors, unwelcome guests and dark comedy into an ominous portrait of the near-future.