Beyond The Flesh
A journey that spans four months, from September to December, bringing a different kind of cinema to Siracusa: radical, visionary, free. This year's theme is dedicated to the body as metaphor, as a site of transformation, drift, mutation and reinvention: the body becomes image, language, symbol, and guides the festival's entire path.
“The cinema of the past is our future”
The bond between the pioneers of the Seventh Art and today's great masters.
The path
A focus on three radical visions
David Cronenberg
Master of mutation and the new flesh
His filmography also includes Naked Lunch, based on the novel by William Burroughs, a cornerstone of the beat generation.
Yorgos Lanthimos
The cinema of distortion and power
Ken Russell
Excessive, iconoclastic vision
Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay draws on Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception.
Special & Extra
- Possession by ŻuławskiPanic Film 18+
- The Fly by Cronenberg
- 45th Anniversary - The Evil DeadPanic Film 18+
- 115th Anniversary - L'InfernoInspired by Gustave Doré's 19th-century illustrations for the Divine Comedy.
- The Silent Image - Mono: 100th Anniversary - Faust (F.W. Murnau)
- The Silent Image - Bauhaus: The Sorrows of Satan (D.W. Griffith)
- The Silent Image - Mono x Pupillo: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, 100th Anniversary - Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
- Cinesound Reading - The Cinema of David Cronenberg
- Cinesound Reading - The Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos
- Cinesound Reading - The Cinema of Lars Von Trier
- Cinesound Reading - The Cinema of Ken Russell
- Cinesound Reading - In the Middle of the Night (Breve Storia dello Stilema Noir)
- The Birth of Cinema
- The Italian Gothic 50th Anniversary - La Casa delle Finestre che Ridono (Pupi Avati)4K UHD restored version.
- 40th Anniversary - Regalo di Natale4K UHD restored.
- VideoCronenberg Retrospective x Zona Cult - Il Demone sotto la pellePresented by Ricky Caruso.
- Post Horror Wave - Special XXX Trilogy Ti West
- TV Series: The Kingdom S01 (1994) - Full HD Restored Version
- Into the Void - 10th Anniversary: David Bowie Live, Spider for Mars
- 20th Anniversary - Inland Empire (David Lynch)Panic Film 18+September 6, 2006 – September 6, 2026
- 45th Anniversary - Altered StatesPanic Film 18+
- Her Private Hell by Nicolas Winding Refn - Italian Premiere / MUBI StreamingPanic Film 18+
- 30th Anniversary - Scream (Wes Craven)
- 80th Anniversary - Notorious (Hitchcock)
The project dedicated to UHD 4K digital restoration of the silent era continues, with radical new scores spanning classical, electronic, metal, punk, ambient, noise and ritual: a new way to listen to silence and restore to the silent image its original power.
Among the special formats, Stereo presents “The Cinema Of”: a collage of images and suggestions from the cinema of Cronenberg, Ken Russell, Lanthimos, Fritz Lang and Lars von Trier.
Post-Horror Wave
The Seventh Art's latest undeclared movement: a cinema that changes skin, that interrogates the present through the uncanny, the symbolic, trauma and the threshold. Brand-new titles and titles to rediscover redefine the language of contemporary horror.
And more
Doku e Moku
A section dedicated to documentary, designed to explore the dark zones of reality and its transformations: portraits of artists, extremes of nature and of the psyche, gazes that stay uncomfortable even outside of fiction.
Our archive
Darkest Film Fest grows out of a path already under way: the seasons and evenings organized since 2020 by Cinedrome, Giuseppe Briffa and Club Silencio in Siracusa.
Discover the archiveDarkest Film Fest is an independent festival that receives no public funding and lives thanks to the support of those who believe in culture as a living, necessary experience. The funds raised cover film distribution rights, the creation and printing of promotional materials, compensation for technical and artistic staff, and the sustainability of cultural and performative activities.
Even a small contribution makes a difference: it supports a festival that brings to Siracusa a cinema that doesn't reach elsewhere.
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