With the ink barely dry on their first round of exciting announcements, organisers of the South’s most celebrated celebration of cinematic strangeness, the CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL, bring a bazooka to a knife fight with a second wave of films and special events they’ll be presenting for attendees of their 13th annual event that runs from June 18 to 27.
They’re coming out of the gate swinging with the festival’s Opening Night selection: legendary filmmaker Gregg Araki’s (DOOM GENERATION, NOWHERE) buzzy and brilliant I WANT YOUR SEX, featuring a stacked cast including Cooper Hoffman, Olivia Wilde, Mason Gooding, Charli XCX, Margaret Cho, Johnny Knoxville, and presented by the good folks at Magnolia Pictures. CFF is honoured to share the latest work by Araki, whose early films were a big influence on the creation of the festival. Funny, transgressive, and boasting one of the most unique tonal-tightropes of any film you’ll see this year, I WANT YOUR SEX makes for a perfect opening salvo for the chaotically curated festival’s 13th edition.
World Premiering as the festival’s 2026 CENTERPIECE SELECTION is writer/director Jacob Perrett’s brilliant nerve-shredder PHOTO NEGATIVE. Presented by longtime CFF co-conspirators ART BRUT FILMS, PHOTO NEGATIVE will take CFF’s 2026 attendees on a wild, increasingly sinister ride.
For their 2026 CLOSING NIGHT SELECTION, the CFF have one hell of a dismount planned for their guests. The World Premiere of Kurtis M. Spieler’s campy and endlessly clever ode to classic vampire cinema, NIGHT OF THE VAMP-FRIARS, from its spectrally-synthy score to its charming practical effects, VAMP-FRIARS is poised to warm the hearts of festival fans—but not before it rips them out of their chests. CFF is honoured to work with presenters CIRCLE COLLECTIVE and VINEGAR SYNDROME PICTURES and close out its 13th edition with a full-on vamp-friar frenzy!
“The world is a mess,” festival director and lead film programmer Chris Dortch II said. “We’re at war, drowning in billionaire BS, getting force-fed AI and ads and toxic manosphere misinformation, and that simply won’t do. At times like this, kindness, community and creativity are all we have. At CFF, we strive to be the acid-dipped antidote to the red carpet-choked landscape of modern film festivals. We don’t care about studios, we’re increasingly bored by the notion of celebrity, and we know that now more than ever, community is the key to getting through all this. We hope all the incredible fans, friends and filmmakers that have supported our event over the years will join us for year 13. We can certainly all use a little good old-fashioned escapism.”
Ever the maximalists, the festival also announced a slew of special screenings, including Italian filmmaker Virgilio Villoresi’s mind-bendingly beautiful retelling of the Orpheus myth ORFEO, presented by OSCILLOSCOPE LABORATORIES. ORFEO is one of the most eye-poppingly gorgeous and hauntingly beautiful fantasy films in recent memory, and fans of iconic filmmakers from Argento to Cocteau will find themselves instantly under its spell.
Expanding its previously announced collaboration with DARK SKY FILMS, CFF also revealed a screening of fest-fan-favorite Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks’s thought-provoking religious horror BLOOD SHINE.
Other highlights include filmmaker Harry Sherriff’s eerie riff on murder mysteries, MISPER, Spider One’s latest bloody blast BIG BABY, and single-take madness following the adventures of a pizza-delivering skeleton in Dusty Saunders’s painstakingly animated BIG CITY PIZZA (the cinematic equivalent of chasing a tasty slice with a few tabs of strong LSD).
Also ready to make sure the festival’s fans leave sockless are the fresh from its SXSW debut comedy/mystery THE PERIL AT PINCER POINT, returning alum Anthony Cousins’s cryptid-crazed FROGMAN RETURNS and the U.S. premiere of Olivier Godin’s demented comedy/drama/martial arts/mind-frick DON’T FORGET THE OATMEAL. The latter is destined to light up the Letterboxd accounts of all who behold its bizarre brilliance.
The only man capable of complementing all this madness is Clay McLeod Chapman, whose raucous live storytelling experience has become an annual staple that CFF fans know to miss at their own peril. The best-selling author and our favourite maniac returns for another skull-shattering edition of his signature event with a focus on ACQUIRED TASTE, his insane new collection of short stories. Followed by his annual signing courtesy of indie booksellers A LITTLE BOOKISH.
With its commitment to audience and filmmaker accessibility, its warm-hearted southern hospitality, and its consistently surprising and eclectic programming, the Chattanooga Film Festival has, in just 13 years, been chosen as One of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World (MovieMaker Magazine), one of FilmFreeway’s Top 100 Best Reviewed Film Festivals in the World out of the nearly 14,000 festivals on that platform, been chosen One of the Best Genre Film (MovieMaker) and Horror Festivals (Dread Central) and hailed as “the gold standard on how to run a welcoming, unpretentious, no-bullshit film fest for folks who want to hang out and have a good time together” by legendary cinema publication FANGORIA.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is a 501c3 non-profit run entirely by a small but passionate crew of volunteers. All proceeds from the festival’s ticket and badge sales and donations go directly to the staging of each year’s festival. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org or follow on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook, and Youtube or even join their virtual monthly secret screening series with The Double Secret Cinema Society on Patreon.
Bloody Flicks 