Norwescon Speculative Film Fest

The Norwescon Speculative Film Fest is a great way to see some of the best cutting edge science fiction, fantasy, and horror short films from around the world.

Norwescon’s Speculative Film Fest embraces and fosters new voices in Speculative Fiction, including those of BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ creators. We have judges who represent these voices, and we waived entry fees for BIPOC directors.

Awards & Prizes

Filmmakers of the films selected to play at Norwescon’s Speculative Fiction Film Fest will be invited to attend Norwescon 46. Attending filmmakers will be able to speak to the audience directly through Q&As following their film screenings.

This year we will be giving out six awards: audience choice, best short film under 10 minutes, best short film under 30 minutes, best science fiction, best fantasy, and best horror.

Winners will be announced on the last day of the convention.

The Films

A Nightcare on Elm Street

A white woman with straight black hair, wearing a white blazer over a pink jacket, stands behind a chair. Seated in the chair is Freddy Krueger, with iconic black hat, red and green striped sweater, knife glove, and burn scars over his skin.

Director: Michael Marie, Anthony Légal
Country of Origin: France
Description: A psychoanalyst receives Frédéric, a patient in full doubt who needs to talk. Like everyday life. Except for one detail: this man turns dreams into nightmares, massacres teenagers for fun and prefers to be called Freddy Krueger.

All Eyes

An instant photo of four teenage women of various races lies on top of a white folder, itself lying on top of more photos of the group of young women. The tagline is 'Dreams come true'.

Director: Claudia Sheng
Country of Origin: United States
Description: A girl group of four in an isolated training camp discover their true purpose while dealing with interpersonal problems.
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Aracne

Two figures lie curled around each other in a white bathtub. One is nude, the other is fully covered in a knitted beige bodysuit.

Director: Cremance
Country of Origin: Mexico
Description: Mimicking the behavior of a spitting spider, a female must cocoon her new prey for a very special ritual.
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Archive & The Storyteller

A white man with short brown hair, wearing beige shirt, jacket, pants, and shoes, stands in a featureless white room. Text says 'Archive: Get yours today'.

Director: Natasha Marie Rivera
Country of Origin: United States
Description: On the brink of human extinction, a young couple struggles to secure a spot on the ‘Archive.’
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Astronauts

The face of a young woman with straight black hair looks out from a window; the image is black and white with scan lines as if seen on an old TV screen.

Director: Pedro Murad
Country of Origin: Brazil
Description: Is solitude between a human and a machine possible? A couple meets in an unexpected way on a dating app. They live their love through a game of impossibilities.

autopsI.A.

A classic disc-shaped UFO hovers a few feet over an empty field.

Director: Lex Ortega
Country of Origin: Mexico
Description: A little girl is kidnapped by an UFO, her father will soon find out why.
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Bird Drone

A seagull sits on rocks near an ocean at sunset, bathed in pink and purple light, next to a white drone. The tagline is 'The gull of his dreams'.

Director: Radheya Jang Jegatheva
Country of Origin: Australia
Description: A heartfelt story of unrequited love explored through a lonely seagull struggling to accept that his newfound object of affection is a human-operated drone with a limited battery life.
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Closing Time

Director: Russell Goldman
Country of Origin: United States
Description: An estranged friend surprises his old college buddies with an unusual reunion.
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Ellipsis

A blurry androgynous figure backlit in blue.

Director: Greg Purcell
Country of Origin: Ireland
Description: “What is your first memory?” Ellipsis awakens, abandoned and seeking answers in a haunted dystopia where nothing is what it appears to be.

Five

The title 'Cinq' over an image of forest ferns disappearing into darkness.

Director: Jérémy Prudent
Country of Origin: France
Description: In the middle of the night, at the foot of the tree where Annie died, four of her friends, Camille, Flora, Lucie and Marion, invoke her in order to make her appear. But can they really?

FOREIGNER

A mountainous landscape with two alien figures, one above with glowing eyes and one below with glowing mouth.

Director: Giovanni A Lodigiani
Country of Origin: United States
Description: An alien looking for life on other planets arrive on earth now made of wastelands.
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Genre

A photocollage of various people tinted in pastel colors makes up the figure of a bearded male with curly hair wearing a t-shirt and jacket.

Director: Nicky Smit
Country of Origin: United States
Description: A cautious man attempts to win back his girl by trying the psychedelic new drug GENRE, but when he unwittingly takes a massive dose, he must find his way back to reality through a genre-bending trip of epic proportions.

Ghost Song

A darkly-lit figure looks up and raises their arms up above their head in front of shrouded windows.

Director: Joseph Keckler, M. Sharkey
Description: A narrator reveals the details of a mysterious, transformative encounter that took place in a remote locale.

Grogans Lodge

A black woman with braided hair and an apprehensive expression stands in dark woods, wearing a dark blouse under a white apron printed with an old map of east Africa.

Director: Isaya Evans
Country of Origin: Kenya
Description: Grogan’s Lodge is about two young Kenyan girls, Joy and Susan, who travel to an up-country lodge in response to a job advert, to earn fees for college.
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I came from the future

Director: Dave Lojek
Country of Origin: Poland
Description: A brooding businessman reads his own suicide note on a roof. He ponders many questions about time travel.
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Megaville – After Hours

A man dressed in black and wearing a black leather trenchcoat looks towards the ground. Behind him is an image of a different, bearded man, and behind that are a series of kanji characters in glowing cubes.

Director: Tim Cürlis, Christian Skibinski
Country of Origin: Germany
Description: On a restless night in the cyberpunk city “Megaville” a disillusioned ranger encounters a washed up chef called Jack. They reach an agreement and a culinary duel to the death follows. A lethal supper that only one of them will survive.

Overtime // The Love Project

Two Japanese women, one holding an origami crane while standing behind the other and looking down over the seated woman's shoulder, both wearing grey suits.

Director: Jamie Kassler
Country of Origin: Japan
Description: A frustrated office worker finds out her routine job is hardly her worst nightmare. The Love 愛 Project // Stories of love told without words
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Promise Me

Two young children sit with crossed arms and cross-legged on grass in front of a playset, apparently deep in conversation.

Director: Paula Rhodes
Country of Origin: United States
Description: When an oddly familiar boy mysteriously appears in Elliot’s yard with a warning, this preschooler will face a decision that could throw him for a loop.

Pur Sang

A menacing looking bearded man with a glowing red implant on his temple stands in the rain; in front of him is a figure wearing a jacket with the hood pulled up and a backpack, face covered, holding a gun.

Director: Hugo Poisson
Country of Origin: France
Description: In the near future, society is managed by strict sanitary rules. Clara, 26, a former resistance figure and notorious criminal, is actively sought and hunted by the police. When she decides to break into the home of Amir, 55, a security guard at a state laboratory, it is to save Léa, her daughter of a few months.

SCRIPT

Director: Piero Cannata
Country of Origin: Italy
Description: Two screenwriters, a ghost story, the night that goes on. Who will put an end to this?

Scrum Wars • Episode 1: A New Sprint

A Star Wars style Death Star under construction.

Director: Jaz Garewal
Country of Origin: United States
Description: Ha’nah Bilbraxia-Stevens gets a crash course in Imperial Agile on her first day as project manager for the galactically past-deadline Death Star. She quickly learns that design critiques can turn deadly when the interim scrum master is the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Sincopat

A person's arm is just visible on the edge of a white bathtub against white stone walls.

Director: Pol Diggler
Country of Origin: Spain
Description: Ona, a creative executive of a large company, is about to launch the latest technological revolution into the market: a device that allows listening to music directly inside the brain.
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Spiral to the Center

A white man with curly brown hair wears headphones and looks surprised, behind him is a vinyl record with light reflecting off the grooves. The tag line is 'How far would you go?'

Director: Alisa Stern, Scott Ampleford
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Description: Rick reviews records and talks about music online. After his reaction to a strange record goes viral, a documentary filmmaker follows Rick down the rabbit hole where he uncovers twelve albums, a record label that disappeared in the 70s, and a dark secret.
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STIGMATE

A bald figure in old religious garb holds a rosary and kneels in front of a window in a whitewashed room.

Director: Sélim Atmane, Hugo Barral
Country of Origin: France
Description: In the middle of the Black Plague, Simon comes back to his monastery after a long pilgrimage. But as he struggles to find his place among the monks, an intruder breaks into the monastery. It is too late to understand that a new evil followed him here…

The Astronaut

A young girl with long brown hair and an excited expression stands in front of a home hallway on one side and galactic nebulas on the other.

Director: Damian Apunte
Country of Origin: United States
Description: Seven-year-old Aura loves everything space. She looks out her window, wishing she could escape the surrounding smog that’s causing her asthma. Her vivid imagination keeps her spirit alive.

The Capsule

Two astronauts stand in space suits on the surface of a moon, looking at a planet as the sun rises.

Director: Kamil Keenan, Agnieszka Żaglewska
Country of Origin: Poland
Description: Two astronauts in a space capsule realize that they won’t have enough oxygen until help arrives. In this extreme situation, they suddenly have to face the ultimate questions.

The Indulgence of Viv le Vac

Director: Danny Shaw
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Description: Viv le Vac is a robot vacuum cleaner with an insatiable hunger that soon gets her in trouble

The Miners

A dark, black and white image of a person wearing an industrial grade breathing mask.

Director: Morgen Whiteman
Country of Origin: United States
Description: In the not too distant future- where America’s era of technological unemployment is ending- a proud, fourth-generation miner’s search for her father leads to an unexpected truth that forces her to question her morals and her purpose.
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The Nightmare Adorable

A sculpted figure of a creature with three eyes, antenna, three spikey teeth at the end of a snout, tentacles for feet, and bat-like wings under its arms, holds a jagged knife. Everything is lit in bright purple as if by a black light.

Director: Joseph Scrimshaw
Country of Origin: United States
Description: The hosts of a horror chat show celebrate their favorite fictional monster, Bapholeth, by selling a cute toy in his image–only to be attacked by a very real cultist offended by the adorable blasphemy.
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The Painting

Director: Krause Cruz
Country of Origin: United States
Description: During an interrogation, Scott must fend for his life against Klein, however, something else might be lurking behind.

The Path of the Greys

A person, slightly blurred, reaches towards the viewer with spread fingers.

Director: Joshua Richard van ’t Hoff
Country of Origin: Netherlands
Description: A Grey pupil in the Star Wars universe is subjected to a physical and mental test by his mentor to prove that he is on the right path of the Force: being neither Jedi nor Sith.
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The Retreat

Three images, one of two young Asian men on a porch, one of a black man and a white woman sitting next to each other and waving as they take photographs, and one of a figure just seen through a doorway of an apartment hallway.

Director: Tommy Heffernan
Country of Origin: United States
Description: David is brought along by his boyfriend Anthony to what seems like a week-long retreat hosted by Anthony’s boss, Krystal, and her husband – he quickly learns that things are not what they seem.
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The Right Vintage

Illustration of a black shape dripping into a cup in a blue circle; the drips have piled to form a silhouette of someone's face.

Director: Trace Winter
Country of Origin: United States
Description: A conman reaches his 100th birthday and is released from prison to enjoy the time he has left, starting with a dram of his favorite whisky.
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The Wayfarer

Illustration of a young child sitting on a rock overlooking hills on either side of a body of water under grey skies, with small furry creatures sitting nearby.

Director: Izzy Shinn
Description: Wayfarer is an animated short film about a witch named Ardem investigating a dangerous forest pass, only to discover the problem may be more complicated than originally thought.
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The Weight of Data

A person is seen from behind sitting at a table with a laptop computer and second screen under a ringlight, bathed in blue light, with numbers visible on the screens.

Director: Dongyeon Kim
Country of Origin: Korea, Republic of
Description: Young-hyun gets curious by Ji-hyun’s saying that data has no weight.
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Three Houses Down

A young woman with stringy brown hair, splattered in green and with several bloody injuries on her face, stands in front of a graphic of several switchblade knives arranged in a circle.

Director: Ty Huffer
Country of Origin: United States
Description: Ah… the Holidays. Filled with joy, laughter, and cheer. And this year, murderous, knife-wielding elves. On Christmas Eve
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Will Ye No Come Back Again?

A figure wearing a helmet stands in front of a circular window. The tagline is 'A remove planet, a lone technician, and a betrayal'.

Director: Deb Ethier
Country of Origin: Canada
Description: A lone communications technician on a distant relay planet must face reality and isolation during her five-year contract with a Terran banking consortium in this animated short.
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You Have Reached Your Destination

A black car is parked in the driveway of a modern home, a yellow balloon is tied to a 'No parking' sign near the street.

Director: Ryan Couldrey
Country of Origin: Canada
Description: With the Google Maps app leading him in circles, a man suspects his phone is purposely lying to him.
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