Access:Horror Film Festival, a celebration of disability in genre film, kicks off its 2026 program with an in-person opening night showcase at the Alamo Drafthouse Winchester on September 25, followed by a virtual program streaming October 4 through November 1, 2026.
Access:Horror was created as a space to explore and celebrate the history, impact, and future of disability in the horror genre, through conversations, connections, and various artistic forms, including film. We acknowledge the interwoven nature of identity and media representation, and celebrate the many intersectional identities that have been at the heart of horror cinema since the beginning. We believe in horror as an agent of change, and seek to elevate discourse that uplifts marginalized creators and gives them space to create new work that imagines new worlds.
Access:Horror was founded by filmmaker and activist Ariel Baska to center disability advocacy through genre cinema. Named one of the most accessible film festivals in the nation in Forbes, this year’s lineup features shorts dissecting medical racism, neurodivergence, disability, depression, and queer persecution.
With the lineup announcement, Baska shared, “Slurs are becoming more common in everyday language, including in Oscar-winning Hollywood films. The government is unleashing daily violence on the disability community through Medicaid cuts, institutionalization, and rollbacks to disability rights protections. For disabled people, this is already a horror movie, which is why, this year, horror feels like the most honest genre out there. Access:Horror is proud to share a lineup of validating, crucial, and cathartic terrors that illustrate the strength of the disability community. Open captions and audio description make the program stronger still, letting us reach more audiences and turn more stomachs with these filmmakers’ gnarly tales”.
This year’s lineup features groundbreaking short films that utilize horror to dissect real-world medical racism, neurodivergence, disability, depression, and queer persecution.
Read on for the full list of films below:
A Fermenting Woman (dir. Priscilla Galvez) – A peculiar chef and fermentation expert prepares a career-saving meal using a very special ingredient. Walk the line between mouthwatering and revolting in this controversial culinary gamble for all the yeast and kimchi lovers out there.
Fantastic Fest, 2025. Nominated for Lost Weekend Awards: Best Horror Short, Best Short, Best Short Director
Blindsided (dir. P. Patrick Hogan) – A relentless POV horror short experienced entirely from inside a blind woman’s perspective as she navigates an unseen threat in her home.
Slamdance, 2026. LA Shorts, 2026. Nominated for the Lost Weekend Award for Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Short
Cold (dir. Liz Whitmere) – A visceral horror-thriller tracking a woman’s body literally decomposing; a horrific transformation weaponized and dismissed by those around her as standard aging and menopause.
Female Eye Film Festival, 2026.
Everhand (dir. Lee Cleaveland) – When a one armed farmer orders a mysterious machine, he and his wife must face off with a company rep in order to reclaim their humanity.
Slamdance, 2026.
Four Itchy Boys (dir. Andrew Hebert) – An LGBTQ+ body horror and queer/trans allegory detailing the sudden media circus surrounding an unexplainable itch. A 2026 Raindance official selection, directed by Andrew Hebert and starring Twilight’s Booboo Stewart, American Horror Story’s Nico Greetham, Never Have I Ever’s Gilberto Ortiz, and Alone at Dawn’s Ben Weinswig.
Dances with Films LA, 2026.Nominated for Lost Weekend Awards: Best Short, Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Short, Best Director, Best Production Design
The Hog Queen (dir. Katherine Craft) – A high-octane drag show survival horror set in a small-town Texas gay bar where a night of performance turns into a fight for physical and creative survival.
Maryland Film Festival, 2026. Features Marissa Bode of Wicked. Nominated for the Lost Weekend Award for Best Comedy Short.
Inner Demons (dir. Jasmine J. Johnson) – A psychological thriller where clinical depression is literalized as a relentless, stalking physical entity.
SXSW, 2026.
Mango (dir. Joan Iyiola) – A searing, experimental essay film unpacking the physical reality of fibroids and the systemic trauma of medical racism against Black women.
Santa Barbara Film Festival, 2025. Executive Produced by Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners). Nominated for the Lost Weekend Award for Best Horror Short.
Tal (Mask) (dir. Charlie Gillette) – A haunting, claustrophobic meditation on immigrant identity and familial expectations. Locked inside a law firm late at night, a secretly queer Korean-American artist is forced into a psychological confrontation with himself. Written by and starring non-binary actor Wesley Han (Russian Doll), delivering a deeply personal and striking lead performance.
Asian American International Film Festival, 2026. Nominated for the Lost Weekend Award for Best Horror Short
Following opening night, the festival transitions online from October 4 through November 1, 2026. The virtual component showcases 19 international titles, featuring all 9 opening night selections alongside 10 additional festival films, plus filmmaker Q&As, panels, and industry talks.
(Note: The virtual program also includes all 9 Opening Night Films listed above).
This year’s streaming lineup is organized into three programs, each one built around a different way horror gets under your skin. Watch them online, at your own pace, through our streaming hub. Every film across the virtual program features open captions, and 9 of the 19 titles include audio description.
Access:Horror isn’t accessibility as an afterthought bolted onto a normal festival. It’s a festival that couldn’t exist without it, made by the people who’d know.
Additional Virtual Selections:
Do You See Her? (dir. Janet-Rose Nguyen)
Heartbreak (dir. Sarah Leigh)
Landfills of Desire (dir. Sapna Moti Bhavnani)
Long Pork (dir. Iris Dukatt)
Mardazma (dir. Amir Masoud Soheili)
PU EKAW TNOD (dir. Rebecca Culverhouse)
REPEAT (dir. Marlon Royal Reid)
Trapped (dir. Greg Jeffs)
Troubled Connexxxions (dir. E’Niyah Wilson)
Voyeur (dir. Maryam Hashempour)
Block 1: Edibles
Everything in this block is hungry for something. A creature that crash landed and needs a meal. A body that’s started growing things nobody invited. A chef chasing one last win before she gets fired. A bar full of people who just wanted to watch a good drag show. Edibles is about appetite in every form it takes: professional, biological, feral, and everything in between. Something here is always eating. Something here is always about to be eaten. You’ve been warned.
Block 2: The Body Keeps the Score
Your body remembers what your mind would rather forget, and this block is here to collect. A woman goes to war with the thing her depression let in. A rancher trades his arm for productivity and finds out what that really costs him. A lawyer’s mask goes missing, and so does the version of himself he built to survive the office. Four men quarantine with an itch nobody can explain, while a producer gets ready to sell their suffering as a spectacle. A woman turns forty and starts quietly, stubbornly falling apart while everyone around her insists that’s just what happens now. Every film here treats the body as evidence: of what happened to it, what’s being done to it, and what it’s still trying to survive.
Block 3: Dead Darlings
“Kill your darlings” is supposed to be writing advice. Nobody warns you it also works as a threat. This block is about the parts of ourselves, our histories, and our attention that refuse to stay buried no matter how hard we try to cut them loose. A woman relives the same violent moment on a loop she can’t edit out. Someone is stalked by a presence that only exists when her vision blurs. Two soldiers try to outrun a road, and a choice, that already caught up with them. A girl gets photographed by someone she’s never seen, over and over. A phone sex operator gives a client exactly the version of herself he’s paying for, and not one drop more. A butcher tracks down the man who killed her daughter and serves him precisely what he’s owed. A disabled man punches into a job that never planned on letting him punch out. A witch who’s neither living nor dead drifts the water, searching for a version of herself she buried a long time ago. A woman takes her boyfriend on one final date, and she’s the only one who knows how it ends. A couple realize the horror movie they’re watching is set in their own basement, and whatever’s down there knows they’re awake. Nothing in this block dies as easily as you’d like.
Horror has always had a complicated relationship with disability. It’s been the twitch that signals evil, the wheelchair that means vulnerable, the scar that means damaged. Access:Horror exists because disabled filmmakers got tired of being the genre’s shorthand and started making the films instead.
The complete 2026 virtual program and film details are available here.
Bloody Flicks 