11. Stranger With My Face International Film Festival // Tasmania, Australia // May 2018
“Stranger With My Face is not the sole female-focused genre film festival, but it’s easily the best,” declares a panelist. Founded by moviemakers Rebecca Thomson and Briony Kidd, the latter of which handles its programming, this Aussie hub in Hobart, Tasmania is where most of the year’s strongest women-powered genre fare tends to end up. The fest takes its name from Lois Duncan’s young adult novel—a nod to its exploration of “the horror within”—and creates an ideal space for gender and genre to collide, conflate, and deepen dialogue surrounding supernatural and splatter films, the art house and the grindhouse in equal measure. There’s also as much competition as there is community: SWMF hosts both the 48-Hour Tasploitation Challenge, in which registered teams complete a short in two days, and the Short Script Challenge, whose participants are also given a two-day slot to write a horror script of seven pages or less. (What’s scarier than that?)
L to R: Honoree Gaylene Preston, guest moviemaker Sandi Sissel, Best Short Film winner Kaitlin Tinker, and Best Feature Film winner Elizabeth E. Schuch at Stranger With My Face International Film Festival 2017. Photograph courtesy of Stranger With My Face International Film Festival
Share:
