H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival Best of 2017 (2017)

H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival Best of 2016

The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® in Portland, OR has been the vanguard of Weird independent filmmaking for more than 20 years. Now you can attend in spirit, with this selection of short films from the 21st Annual festival in 2016! Including "Speaking in Tongues" by Thomas Nicol, "Vardøger" by Ludovic de Gaillande, "Poetry & The Gods" by Louis Rossignol, "Tale of Wingate's Journal" by Jeremy Peterson, "Zerch" by Xavier Velasco, "The Call of Charlie" by Nick Spooner, "The Bone Garden" by Monsieur Soeur, "Hypnos" by Juho Aittanen, "The Package" by Eric Morgret, "An Eldritch Place" by Julien Jauniaux + Bonus Music Video.

The Painter

An ex-CIA operative is thrown back into a dangerous world when a mysterious woman from his past resurfaces. Now exposed and targeted by a relentless killer and a rogue black ops program, he must rely on skills he thought he left behind in a high-stakes game of survival.

Rogue Hostage

A former Marine races against time to save a group of hostages -- including his young daughter and a congressman — when armed militants take over his stepfather's store.

Apache Junction

Apache Junction is an outpost of lawlessness, a haven for thieves and cold-blooded killers. After big-city reporter Annabelle Angel arrives to write an article on the town, she becomes a target when notorious gunslinger Jericho Ford comes to her aid. Now Annabelle must entrust her future to a man with a deadly past, as Jericho heads toward a tense showdown.

Love at First Kiss

The story of Javier who, at the age of 16, while kissing a girl for the first time, realized that he had a gift of romantic clairvoyance. Javier can see the future... and he finally knows who the love of his life is.

F*ck Love Too

In this romantic comedy, several friends, each dealing with unhappy love lives, turn to each other for help - but not always with the best results.

Maybe More

After 25 years together, married life has taken its toll on Xavier and Sophie, so when Sophie decides to invite their neighbours over for dinner, Xavier is less than enthusiastic to say the least! He can’t stand how obviously still in love they are and their lack of discretion… especially at night! On coming face-to-face with the uninhibited couple, Xavier and Sophie will be forced to confront their own, sad reality, before finding themselves pushed into a corner by a somewhat… indecent proposal.

Noryang: Deadly Sea

The Imjin War reaches its seventh year in December of 1598. Admiral Yi Sun-shin learns that the Wa invaders in Joseon are preparing for a swift withdrawal following the deathbed orders of their leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Determined to destroy the enemy once and for all, Admiral Yi leads an allied fleet of Joseon and Ming ships to mount a blockade and annihilate the Wa army. However, once Ming commander Chen Lin is bribed into lifting the blockade, Wa lord Shimazu Yoshihiro and his Satsuma army sail to the Wa army's rescue at Noryang Strait.

Trunk - Locked In

28-year-old medicine student Malina wakes up disoriented in a locked trunk and realizes, to her horror, that she is missing more than just her memory of what happened. With her phone as the only link to the outside world, the intelligent young woman wages a desperate fight for survival while the vehicle races relentlessly toward a terrible secret.

National Family

Don Poli, the patriarch of a family embedded in politics, faces the change of party in his state - after a hundred years in power - losing all his privileges. Humiliated and angry, he threatens to disinherit his family and leave to rebuild his life. This forces his children (Kippy, Ramses and Belén) to take extreme measures to ensure their future, causing everything that could go wrong to turn out worse.

The Twin

Every parent's worst nightmare is just the beginning for Rachel's ordeal as in the aftermath of a tragic accident, she and her husband Anthony decide to move to the other side of the world to focus on their surviving twin son Elliot. What begins as a time of healing and isolation in the Finnish countryside turns into a desperate battle for the very soul of their son as an entity claiming to be his dead twin brother takes over Elliot — setting Rachel on a diabolical journey to unravel the horrible truth about her twin son.

Flow

A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.

The No Man Zone. The Movie

What will happen if, as a result of biological warfare, almost the entire male population dies out? Women will grieve (for a short time), and then they will unite and create a new better world - with eco-towns, renewable energy, opportunities to do whatever they want, even science and biohacking, even yoga and self-development. Reproduction now occurs by artificial insemination, and only girls are born in the new world. But not everyone likes such a world order. Some of the surviving men and women loyal to them go to live in abandoned cities, begin to steal electricity, enjoying freedom and traditional sex. The tranquility of the ideally arranged female world is threatened when teacher Rada from the eco-city "Two Hills" meets the young "primate" Hera outside it.

Warhorse One

A gunned down Navy SEAL Master Chief must guide a child to safety through a gauntlet of hostile Taliban insurgents and survive the brutal Afghanistan wilderness.

The Duel

Ernesto lives in depression and decides to hire a hit-man to end his own life. However, his plan takes an unexpected turn when he meets Rita, whose love gives him a new reason to live.

The Crusade

Abel, Marianne and their 13-year-old son Joseph live together in Paris. Their everyday existence is thrown into turmoil when Abel and Marianne discover that Joseph has secretly sold valuables from the family home to finance a mysterious ecological project he and his friends have in Africa. They’re about to save the planet.

A

Roughly chronological, from 3/96 to 11/96, with a coda in spring of 1997: inside compounds of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist sect led by Shoko Asahara. (Members confessed to a murderous sarin attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.) We see what they eat, where they sleep, and how they respond to media scrutiny, on-going trials, the shrinking of their fortunes, and the criticism of society. Central focus is placed on Hiroshi Araki, a young man who finds himself elevated to chief spokesman for Aum after its leaders are arrested. Araki faces extreme hostility from the Japanese public, who find it hard to believe that most followers of the cult had no idea of the attacks and even harder to understand why these followers remain devoted to the religion, if not the violence.

F

F, an 18-year-old boy, immerses himself in the world of the Drag Queen where he begins to build his identity despite family and social mandates, which impose on him to be afraid and ashamed of being who he is.

Raiders of the Lost Library

While digging one of the many tunnels for the Moscow metro, Soviet workers unearth ruins of a dungeon. The site is closed, the metro tunnel is diverted, and amidst the bustle no one notices the tunnel workers’ foreman pocketing a little ‘souvenir’ – a book-sized frame made of precious metals featuring an inscription in an unknown language. Decades later, the foreman’s grandson Ilya, who works as a courier, discovers the ancient relic in a pile of old junk. Oblivious to the true value of the family heirloom, he soon learns about it from a mysterious stranger. The relic is the key to the secret location of the priceless ancient library that belonged to Ivan the Terrible. What Ilya doesn’t know is that the search for the lost library has been going on for centuries, and now very powerful people are after him. Ilya and the mysterious stranger decide to try their luck in finding the library.

The Best Man

Mercenaries seize control of a remote resort hotel during a wedding and it's up to the best man, the groom and their drunken best friend to stop the terrorists and save the hostages.

The Garden of Sinners: The Hollow Shrine

June 1998: After spending two years in a coma caused by a traffic accident, Shiki Ryougi awakens with amnesia. She is visited by Touko Aozaki, a wizard and proprietor of a studio called Garan no Dou. Shiki has lost not only the memory of her accident, but also any real sense that she's even alive. Strangely, enigmatic beings begin to attack her...

Topside

Deep in the underbelly of New York City, a five year-old girl and her mother live among a community that has claimed the abandoned subway tunnels as their home. After a sudden police-mandated eviction, the pair are forced to flee aboveground into a brutal winter night. Determined to return home, they fight to find shelter as their world is thrown into chaos.

Madeleine Collins

Judith leads a double life between Switzerland and France. On the one hand Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, on the other Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Little by little, this fragile balance, made up of lies, secrets and back and forth, cracks dangerously. Trapped, Judith chooses to head forward, at the risk of losing everything.

1

A bookshop renowned for its rare works is mysteriously and filled with copies of a book entitled 1, which doesn't appear to have a publisher or author. The strange almanac describes what happens to humanity in a minute. A police investigation begins and the bookshop staff are placed in solitary confinement by the Bureau for Paranormal Research. As the investigation progresses, the situation becomes more complex and the book becomes increasingly well-known, raising numerous controversies. Plagued by doubts, the protagonist has to face facts: reality only exists in the imagination of individuals.

Shamshera

Set in the 1800s, the film is about a "dacoit" tribe who take charge in fight for their rights and independence against the British.

Looop Lapeta

When her boyfriend loses a mobster's cash, Savi races against the clock to save the day — if only she can break out of a curious cycle of dead ends.

Ziggy: Soreyuke! R&R Band

Japanese rock band Ziggy comes to London and gets attacked upon arrival at the hotel after a recording session. The musicians barely escape the attack; however, soon they learn that their producer has been murdered, and they are the suspects! Chased by police and some mysterious organization, they find shelter at a local rockers' place and even give a performance there; but it is not too long before their pursuers appear again.

Assassin Club

In this world of contract killers, Morgan Gaines is the best of the best. When Morgan is hired to kill six people around the world, he soon discovers all the targets are also assassins unknowingly hired to kill each other.

Black Dog

On the edge of the Gobi desert in Northwest China, Lang returns to his hometown after being released from jail. While working for the local dog patrol team to clear the town of stray dogs before the Olympic Games, he strikes up an unlikely connection with a black dog. These two lonely souls embark on a journey together.

Detective vs. Sleuths

When Hong Kong is rocked by multiple gruesome murders, the police forms a task force to investigate. Jun, once a brilliant detective who suffered a mental breakdown, begins his own investigation. Eventually, the police learn that the murder victims are all suspects of cold cases being rubbed out by a figure known as "The Sleuth". Now, Jun and a detective from the task force are on a race against time to beat the brutal killer at its own game.

Bramayugam

Thevan, a folk singer of the Paanan caste, has a fateful encounter when escaping slavery, leading to discover an ancient tradition altering his destiny.

The OctoGames

Eight contestants compete in eight deadly, classic children's games. They seek fame beyond their wildest dreams, competing for the chance to take over the YouTube channel of the famous yet elusive masked content creator known only as "JaxPro".

C(r)ook

A killer for the Russian Mafia in Vienna wants to retire and write a book about his passion - cooking. The mafia godfather suspects treason.

Untold: Deal with the Devil

Christy Martin broke boundaries and noses as she rose in the boxing world, but her public persona belied personal demons, abuse and a threat on her life.

American Beast

After a confrontation, a group of women are taken by a presence.

Togo

Togo just wants to watch his neighbors' homes, wash their cars and clean up their sidewalks. But the drug traffickers want more from him.

To Every You I've Loved Before

While struggling to make friends after his parents’ divorce, Koyomi Takasaki meets Kazune Takigawa, but apparently, they already have. Kazune reveals that she’s from World Line 85, an alternate universe in which she and Koyomi are lovers. But in a reality where moving between dimensions is natural, could Koyomi be the one from another world?