Buried Alive Film Festival: An indie horror extravaganza

Horror film fanatics, assemble! The Buried Alive Film Festival is returning to Atlanta for its tenth year running, bringing independent, innovative horror films from around the world to our city. The two-day event will take place Nov. 14-15 at Synchronicity Theatre, conveniently located across the street from SCAD Atlanta.

This year’s Buried Alive will showcase three feature films and 68 short films, amounting to 16 or so hours of the latest and greatest works that horror cinema has to offer. Festival programmers hand-picked this year’s films from a pool of 440 that were submitted by filmmakers hailing from 32 different countries.

All three of Buried Alive’s feature films will be having their premieres at the festival. These frightening features include: “Curtain,” Jaron Henrie-McCrea’s New York-based cautionary tale about the hidden dangers of shower curtain installation; “Bunny the Killer Thing,” a Norwegian film from director Joonas Makkonen that takes eco-horror to new and bizarre sexual heights; and closing night feature “The Interior,” directed by Trevor Juras, a festival favorite that chronicles a man losing his mind in the Canadian wilderness.

As for the festival’s many short films, two will have their world premieres at Buried Alive: “Head,” directed by Rueben Pla, and “1580 AM,” directed by local filmmaker Brian Teague. Both Pla and Teague will participate in Q&A sessions following their films’ screenings. Several of the other short films will have their American premieres at the festival, as well, including: from Mexico, Xavier Velasco’s “Zerch”; from Argentina, Leandro Cozzi’s “From the Guts”; from England, Jamie Hooper’s “Terry and Brenda”; and also from England, Abigale Blackmore’s “Vintage Blood.”

Buried Alive will expand into new categorical territory in its tenth year, presenting its first music video and experimental film program. The festival’s popular animation program will now include puppetry films, as well. Lastly, Buried Alive will partner with Splatter Cinema, Atlanta’s only grindhouse movie series, to present a 40th-anniversary screening of the 1975 Italian slasher classic “Deep Red,” directed by Dario Argento.

Buried Alive’s 2015 lineup promises to be its most diverse to date — this year’s festival will feature films from more countries than ever before, as well as more films by female directors than ever before. Lovers of inventive, horrific indie cinema are in for quite a weekend.

Tickets to individual screenings are $10 and all-access weekend passes go for $50. For more information on the festival and the full film schedule, visit the Buried Alive Film Festival website.