The Last Story on Earth | Dir. Aaron Immediato | Short, USA, 18 min
Facing angry protesters, a determined drag queen does her best to finish a fairy tale reading at the local library. But when an alien invasion upends Earth’s existence, the queen encounters new challenges that carry terrifying outcomes for humanity. Ultimately, it is the supreme power of imagination that holds the key to both the queen’s survival and the invaders’ domination.

SCRUMPTIOUS | Dir. Paul Jacob Presley | Short, USA, 8 min
A foxy thief gets more than she bargained for when a routine money drop turns to terror.

Evaders | Dir. Hudson Shelton | Short, USA, 15 min
In an authoritarian future America, the government controls gender and family life. Ziya and Walker, two 17-year-olds, anxiously await their next birthday, which marks their Specification ceremony: the day when they must choose to be male or female and will get sorted into nuclear families. The only way out is becoming the government’s greatest fear: Evaders, those who escape Specification and run away from society.

Mermaid | Dir. Jerry D. Ochoa | Short, USA, 10 min
Tobi, a trans man haunted by his mother’s death in a boating accident, clings to the belief that she survives beneath Lake Michigan as a mermaid calling him home. As his obsession deepens, his partner Hannah struggles to keep their love afloat before it slips beneath the waves.

Bitter Feast | Dir. Yishu Guan | Short, China, 15 min
A story about Su Li, a young girl trapped in psychological turmoil due to binge eating disorder, who faces emotional and moral trials as she struggles between breaking free from control and searching for her true self.

little death | Dir. Juno Rose | Short, USA, 5 min
A dissociative girl falls in love with a promiscuous lady after a series of hookups.

The Last Goodbye | Dir. Kailey Wolf | Short, USA, 16 min
After learning Iga, a woman she once went on a date with, is working at her grandmother’s funeral service, Basia struggles to navigate her truth and her conservative familial pressure to conform, leading her to re-evaluate her life and take a leap of faith into the unknown.

Bereaved | Dir. Avery Paty | Short, USA, 7 min
One year after a horrific accident, a couple tries to find solace with close friends but beneath the surface, something far darker than grief awaits.

The Visitor | Dir. Nikolaus Aldrich | Short, USA, 11 min
With his relationship in a rough patch and his career stalled, a man tries to find new purpose by retreating to the Pacific Northwest. While there, strange things begin to happen as he grapples with his sense of reality.

XY | Dir. Stephan Fleet | Short, USA, 12 min
A repressed convenience store clerk named Y and a trans cam girl named X have their lives tragically intersect at a bleak strip mall in today’s America. A country where identity is regulated and guns are not.

Run Time: 120 min + live filmmaker Q&A

Queer Fear Film Festival celebrates queer stories from the dark, weird, and wild end of the genre spectrum. Now in our 5th year, Queer Fear is proudly the oldest queer genre film festival in the world and the only queer genre film festival in the South. What started as a niche idea has grown into an international celebration of LGBTQIA+ voices in horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and all the beautifully strange spaces in between.