The 2021 AxWound Film Fest makes a dazzling debut with its opening night short horror block featuring seven standouts from female filmmakers.
The 6th Annual AxWound Film Festival (Virtual Editon) got off to a strong start, kicking off 10 full days of stacked programming — including 40 short films and special events — from female-identifying and nonbinary filmmakers and creators. During opening night, attendees were treated to a stellar block of seven deadly, diverse, and captivating horror shorts.
1. Celebrity Stalker
A “celebrity stalker” broadcasts herself on social media breaking into homes of the elite, unaware that she may have picked up her own stalker along the way.
Written and directed by Roshni “Rush” Bhatia, Celebrity Stalker is one of the short films Rush produced during the 2020 pandemic. It’s a smart, stylish, and sinister exploration of our cultural obsession with celebrity and voyeurism.
Grown-up in Mumbai, Rush has been inspired by filmmakers like James Cameron and Ridley Scott and writers like Richard Matheson and Rod Serling. With a wide range of storytelling from sci-fi to horror, she went to the US to study film. Several of her shorts have been touring the festival circuit to great success.
Her one-minute short film shot on an iPhone, Dark Passage, was singled out by Hollywood Heavyweights like Die Hard screenwriter Steven E. De Souza. You can watch it right here. You can also visit Rush’s site to learn more about her other shorts, including Plasmid, which was selected at more than 30+ film festivals — including Leeds International Film Festival and /slash film festival.
Rush is definitely a rising talent and one to watch in the horror scene. Here work has been receiving tremendous buzz, for good reason, and she just secured her first feature film deal — an action thriller — with a renowned production company in LA.
You can check out Rush’s compelling, under-five-minute short Celebrity Stalker right now on YouTube.
2. A Void
Maya, a Mexican girl, has to walk home. Due to insecurity in the streets of her hometown, she is being followed by her worst fear.
It’s only two minutes long, but this small slice of creative filmmaking left a big impression on me.
It’s a beautiful but deeply unsettling story about women experiencing fear and discomfort on a persistent basis while going about their ordinary, everyday activities. In the animated film from filmmaker and animator Andrea Maldonado, we see Maya going through this feeling of insecurity in a task as simple as walking home, a thing made dangerous by the current violent climate in Andrea’s home country of Mexico.
There’s even an end card that explains that, “In Mexico, 10 women are murdered everyday. The streets are filled with the blood of my sisters, and I could be next.”
While the film explores the horrific situation for women in Mexico, the feeling of fear and vulnerability so powerfully reflected in A Void is, unfortunately, something women around the world can relate to. Even in the wealthiest and most civilized and progressive parts of the world, a shadow of terror often follows women wherever they go.
Check out audience feedback for A Void from the 2021 Latino Festival, where it recently screened, and be sure to keep this film and this talented filmmaker on your radar.
3. Dana
After being attacked one night, Diana believes that something must change and decides to do her justice.
This riveting, 18-minute film from Spanish filmmaker Lucía Forner Segarra is a rape/revenge film from a female lens.
As a result, the focus of the film isn’t on the sensationalized brutally of the attack against our protagonist, Diana (who dubs herself “Dana”, meaning “the one who does justice”). Rather, it’s on the empowerment she feels from deciding to take justice into her own hands. We see enough of Diana’s attack to feel genuinely frightened and disgusted, but not so much that it ever feels exploitative or uncomfortable.
One night, after meeting a friend at a bar for a congratulatory drink and leaving to walk home, Diana experiences a traumatizing assault and attempted rape. In self defense, she murders the attacker. After returning home and trying to recover from the ordeal, she hears about the murder on the radio and learns that her attacker was a recenty-released serial rapist and murderer, released along with several other dangerous sexual predators, due to budget cuts.
Fearing these potentially unrehabilitated monsters are out prowling the streets and putting other women at risk, Diana embarks on a thrilling, bloody, and oh-so-satisfying mission to stop these men before they can claim any more victims. Lead actress Thais Blume is extraordinary, and Dana is a wild ride that will keep you captivated from beginning to end — a fully realized and immersive story despite its short length.
Dana is the third short from director, writer, and producer Lucía Forner Segarr. Her previous short, Marta, was very well received at festivals and became a candidate for the Goya. Follow Lucia on Facebook to keep up with her work and find out when and where you can screen her films.
4. The Plant Collector
Julia collects plants from all over, particularly the gardens of notorious killers across the UK.
At just five minutes, I really fell in love with The Plant Collector. It’s just strange enough to be memorable, but remains really grounded and real.
The concept is great. A woman (Julia Frances) is being interviewed by the film’s unseen writer/director Kathyrn MacCorgarry Gray. Julia is talking about her unusual hobby; she collects plants from the homes of notorious UK killers after they have been caught and convicted of their crimes. The interviewer (Gray) is talking to her about her collection and is enlisted to follow Julia as she embarks on a journey to collect a new plant, from the home of a recently captured killer.
It should be perfectly safe. The home’s violent owner has already left the premises. Or has he?
Kathryn MacCorgarry Gray is a director, writer, and producer born and raised in South West London. In 2018, she co-wrote/produced/directed a self-financed micro-budget feature dark comedy mockumentary South African Spook Hunter (watch the trailer here). In 2020, she co-founded production company Mongrel Pictures, within the first year creating seven unique and thought-provoking stories, with minimal budgets. Their films have been selected for BIFA, BAFTA, and Academy Award qualifying festivals.
Her personal work is focussed on female perspectives, often explored through horror and dread.
The idea for The Plant Collector was born out of a film club Gray is part of. Towards the end of the Covid 19 lockdown, the club decided to create a film challenge. Gray had been working on a full-length feature documentary following her friend and fellow filmmaker Julia Frances, who actually has the unusual hobby of collecting plants from the gardens of killers across the UK.
For The Plant Collector, she decided to blur the lines between documentary and fiction in a really fun and effective way. The result is a playful look at the world of true crime fans and the lengths to which they’ll go to connect and understand these notorious killers.
Keep up with Kathryn on Twitter and Instagram, and check out more of her work on Vimeo.
5. Green and Growing Things
When a young woman meets a mysterious stranger living in an abandoned cabin, a dark secret is brought to the surface. Will she finally confront the past or run away…again?
It’s truly inspiring viewing the work of young talent at these festivals — talent that is already so assured, so developed, and so promising.
Green and Growing Things is the work of Texas filmmaker Hope Wager. Hope graduated early with a B.S. in Communications & Sociology from ODU in Virginia, and then entered the freelance film world. In 2018, she moved across the country to attend my alma mater, the University of Texas in Austin, and pursue an MFA in Film Production. An award-winning director and lifelong fan of horror movies, Wager centers queer stories in films beyond dramas and comedies and into more fantastical genres.
She believes it’s important that queer people are empowered to tell their own stories from behind the camera and in front of it.
Hope explains her vision for her suspenseful and wonderfully creepy 12-minute short:
Traditional fairy tales and old-fashioned campfire stories are two of my favorite forms of storytelling because they turn abstract fears and horrors into a monster with a name and a face. I made “Green and Growing Things” with the goal of bringing this dread and fear and surrealism to life in a visual medium.
A slow-burning and atmospheric tale, Wager is excellent and cultivating unease — relishing in that nerve-wracking feeling that something is not quite right despite how innocent it may seem.
Green and Growing Things reminded me of the exceptional “tea hypnosis” scene in Get Out that begins as a seemingly friendly exchange and steadily escalates to a point of unbearable tnesion and terror as hospitality slowly melts away to reveal a much darker intent.
Be sure to check out all of Hope’s work on her Vimeo channel and follow her on Instagram to see more from this blossoming filmmaking talent.
6. Bird
An elderly woman is haunted by a mysterious electric scooter.
I absolutely loved this exquisite six-minute short.
Beautifully shot and scored, it takes something so seemingly benign and innocuous and turns it into a source of relentless terror. Written and directed by Sara June and primarily featuring a cast of just one (the excellent Cecelia Phoenix), this short is absolutely gorgeous to look at and gave me a sense that it was working as an allegory for anxiety — the way even simple, day-to-day occurrences can be a source of waking nightmares.
For those suffering from mental illness and severe anxiety, the fear can be crippling. Even if nothing is actually wrong, everything at any point could be wrong. And that sense of pervasive dread is monstrous. What makes real life so horrifying is how random life is. There’s no “why” for the terror life throws at us. Everything just is, and it can’t be planned for or controlled.
Bird beautifully captures this sense of inescapable doom in a way that lingered with me.
Sara June is a director and former movie theater employee living in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find more information on this promising filmmaker, but I’m definitely going to keep her on my radar.
7. This is Our Home
When a bleeding-heart vegan and her pragmatic roommate’s rodent infestation intensifies, they find themselves at odds regarding methods that are inhumane yet effective.
Festival favorite This is Our Home from Atlanta and NY-based filmmaker A.K. Espada is an intense and darkly funny film that asks the thought-provoking question, “Whose home is it?”
When humans invade the land and space once inhabited by wild animals and creatures, we are quick to claim dominion. We assert that what we build and buy belongs to us. But what about the living things who came first? What happens when they decide to reclaim their territory?
Espada’s obsession with horror is only surpassed by her love for indie filmmaking. Her recent films include LAUNDRY NIGHT, which was awarded a special jury prize at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival; IN SILENCE, for which she was nominated for Best Director of a Short Film at SoHo International Film Festival; and JUST ANOTHER PLACE, which won Best Film in Atlanta Magazine’s “Where I’m From” contest.
Espada’s LAUNDRY NIGHT recently ended its very successful festival run and was picked up by Crypt TV, premiering on October 1st, 2021. You can watch this highly effective exercise in mounting dread and tension, shot at a single location, right here on YouTube. Watch it at night with the lights out, and prepare to be terrified.
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