Returning for its 5th annual virtual celebration of all things queer horror, the award winning Soho Horror Film Festival is intent on turning grindhouse to Grindr-house with SOHOME HORROR PRIDE 2024. Across a four-day online gala of gayness, the festival brings the very best voices in LGBTQ+ filmmaking through 11 fierce features, over 20 slay shorts, and 5 very special live events, all broadcast to your screens at home.
Opening the festival with a symphony of scares is the UK Premiere of The Piper, Erlingur Thoroddsen’s haunting remix of the Pied Piper of Hamlin fable which features one of the final performances from the incredible Julian Sands, and a stunning score from genre legend Christopher Young. Keeping things in a melodic mood, Sohome Horror Pride will also host a live show celebrating the breadth of horror film musical adaptations with exclusive performances. Dialing up the distortion and turning down the good taste, closing the festival will be Heidi Moore's Kill Dolly Kill, as a gaggle of drag queens compete for Serial of the Year in a punk opera sleaze that will leave you Troma-tised.
Drag finds its horror centre stage this year, with Nightmare on Fierce Street podcast joining to honour the 50th anniversary of Divine and John Waters’ infamous classic Female Trouble, and an exclusive live director's commentary of 2023's viciously vogue Femme. That's not all, as SoHome continues to champion the directors of drag horror cult classic Death Drop Gorgeous by screening a whole new leviathan in Saint Drogo. Prepare for a horny, ethereal, queer folk horror that will lure you in with its rural beauty before gnawing your throat out. Concluding this celebration of dragis a special evening with drag queen genre icon, Peaches Christ, who will present her short films alongside collaborator Michael Varrati for Midnight Mass.
Coming (out) of (r)age horror is set to terrify on many levels, starting with conversion therapy chiller Ganymede, the international debut of Sam Probst and Colby Holt. Medieval revenge and sapphic redemption collide in GB Foxwood's Wild Eyed and Wicked, while The Bell Keeper offers a supernatural slasher in a direct-to-noughties-DVD throwback. Also receiving a UK Premiere at the festival is Dutch feature We Are Animals, which offers something tender yet viscerally vampiric. If you're not over spider cinema yet in 2023, steel yourself for the strangest body horror you’ll see all year in Ion De Sosa’s euro satire Mamantula.
A prevalent theme across the line-up is the forging and security of identity, which is especially true in a special preview of Nicholas Vince's one man show cinematic adaptation I Am Monsters! Also included is the colonialist camp of Gil Baroni's House of Izabel, a twisted Brazilian '60s set melodrama where male-presenting individuals escape to a country estate to explore their feminine personas. Trans narratives and general excellence has a special presentation in T-Shockers, a showcase of the current best in trans horror that features just a few of almost 30 short films being exhibited across the event.
Sohome Horror Pride will also play host to a special evening celebrating and bidding farewell to the female horror collective Ghouls Magazine with a series of panels, retrospectives on feminine cannibal movies and an exclusive preview screening of Aimee Kuge’s Cannibal Mukbang.
From its inception in 2018, the Soho Horror Film Festival has held LGBTQ+ visibility, inclusivity and celebration as one of its cornerstones. So, get your glitter ready, scream me by your name, and join us this July.
Sohome Horror Fest: Pride Edition is a virtual film festival taking place from the 11TH-14TH July. For accessibility and inclusivity, the festival is run on a Donate-What-You-Can price basis, with a recommended donation of £40 to help cover the costs of the festival. In addition, a proportion of all donations will be given to Mermaids UK, an organisation that provides support for Trans, Non Binary & Gender diverse youth. Much of the festival will be accessible globally but certain screenings will be geo-blocked to the UK.
Information can be at WWW.SOHOHORRORFEST.COM
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