Starring: Rachel Zegler, Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Josh Andrés Rivera, Corey Stoll, Brian d’Arcy James, Rita Moreno

Two teenagers from different ethnic backgrounds fall in love in 1950s New York City.

Starring: Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson, Daphne Patakia, Olivier Rabourdin

A 17th-century nun becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair, but it’s her shocking religious visions that threaten to shake the Church to its very core.

Starring: Stephanie Beatriz, María Cecilia Botero, Wilmer Valderrama, Adassa, Diane Guerrero

The Madrigals are an extraordinary family who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia in a charmed place called the Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family with a unique gift — every child except Mirabel. However, she soon may be the Madrigals last hope when she discovers that the magic surrounding the Encanto is now in danger.

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie

Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil’s romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides. The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, reveling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter — all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form — he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil’s cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, Sally Hawkins

The marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles has long since grown cold. Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate. There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game. But this year, things will be profoundly different. Spencer is an imagining of what might have happened during those few fateful days.

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson

A childless couple in rural Iceland make an alarming discovery one day in their sheep barn. They soon face the consequences of defying the will of nature, in this dark and atmospheric folktale, the striking debut feature from director Valdimar Jóhannsson.

The second local shorts program from Brooklyn Horror Fest will chill you to the bone with tales that fall within the realm of real-life horror including a sick game of death, a bad romance, and a therapy session gone so, so wrong.

The Cell-Tale Heart
dir. Jess Jacklin

Hazel
dir. Jordan Doig

Twin
dir. Daniel Daly

Other Bodies
dir. Alyssa Loh

Gold
dir. Gi Gonzales

Someone’s In Here
dir. Ben Kitnick

Bed
dir. Emily Bennett

Where No One Will Find Her
dir. Ahnmin Lee

Andronicus
dir. Mark H. Rapaport

Starring: Peter Mullan, David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Josh Lucas, Brendan Sexton III, Paul Guilfoyle

20th anniversary screening

Twenty years ago, director Brad Anderson and a top-notch group of character actors turned Massachusetts’ storied and creepy-as-hell Danvers State Mental Hospital into the setting for Session 9, one of the horror genre’s all-time bleakest and most psychologically terrifying films— no hyperbole at all. It’s the story of an asbestos clean-up crew’s descent into madness and destruction at the hands of the hospital’s supernatural powers, and it’s lost none of its stunning ability to burrow into its viewer’s minds— and, most importantly, scare the hell out of them.

Join Brooklyn Horror for a special 20th anniversary screening, including an exclusive virtual Q&A with director/co-writer Brad Anderson and actor/co-writer Stephen Gevedon.

Starring: Libby Ewing, Evan Dumouchel, MacLeod Andrews

U.S. premiere

Wilson Shaw (Evan Dumouchel) and his sister Daphne (Libby Ewing) have suffered through disappointment after disappointment for their entire lives. Only during the final throes of their misery do they discover a malevolent entity has been behind their misfortune all along, and the siblings set out to eradicate it from their bloodline once and for all. With his third feature, following the acclaimed They Look Like People and The Siren (BHFF 2018 Closing Night), Perry Blackshear gathers the same great core acting trio of his previous films plus the excellent Ewing to tell his darkest story yet— one of fierce love and loyalty in the face of ultimate evil.

Starring: Robert Patrick, Nick Stahl, Scott Haze, Kelli Garner, Tony Hale, Jake Weber

NY premiere

A mother’s death hangs over her children’s lives in this haunting, Southern Gothic tale. As the story unfolds through four chapters, we’re introduced to the vastly different lives of a group of adult siblings from the codependent relationship between Thomas and his abusive father Josiah, to the criminal life of Eli and Mary, whose main concern is adopting a child of her own. Each new section brings a shift in genre while always maintaining a dark and foreboding tone culminating in a shocking reunion at their childhood farmhouse.