Iberian color in this edition of The Freakiest Night, now divided in two sessions

 Three Spanish titles and an American one make up a program of two shorts and two features, scheduled in pairs (short/feature) for the last Friday and Saturday of the Festival

 The Amazing Vaccine of Doctor Dickinson, by Álex Rey, and Ghosts of the Ozarks, by Matt Glass and Jordan Wayne will be screened on Friday, April 29 at Cinesa El Muelle, while My name is Koji, by David Muñoz, and the feature Everyone Will Burn, by David Hebrero, will be screened the following day at the same place

 Film critic and writer Jesús Palacios, the driving force behind the Gran-Canarian festival’s marathon of fantastic, wild and horror cinema, will introduce both sessions and will be accompanied by director David Hebrero during the second one

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Monday 28 March 2022.- The Freakiest Night returns to its time slot, the night, after an evening edition, and goes through a change in its approach: it substitutes its usual film marathon for two separate short/feature sessions scheduled for the last Friday and Saturday of the Festival, on April 29 and 30, at 10 pm at Cinesa El Muelle.

Even though no restrictions are currently being considered, the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival maintains a careful approach, appropriate to the present situation and the dates the event will take place. Therefore, the films that would usually start at 6 and 8 pm, with exceptions depending of their lengths, as in The Freakiest Night’s case and some other sections, will begin at 10 pm, thus reclaiming its natural environment, the night. However, the Festival will not, according to its director Luis Miranda, prolong the event until too late in the night. That’s why this year The Freakiest Night will be divided into two sessions of nearly two-and-a-half hours long, each.

The selection made by Jesús Palacios, our expert in extreme, fantastic and horror cinema, is formed by two short films that are “two raw gems, harvested at the Yebes-Valdeluz 4661 International Film Fest’s contest of Space and Science-Fiction Short Films”, and two features. Three of these works are Spanish, the two short films and one of the features. The fourth title is American.

“It’s been so much time waiting for the apocalypse that when it happens, we don’t even notice it … In The Freakiest Night(s) … we know we are already living postapocalyptic times, post-pandemic and post-everything else”. In this way Jesús Palacios opens the text from the catalogue that talks about the four titles making up this edition’s program. Its first session, on Friday April 29, will show Álex Rey’s short film The Amazing Vaccine of Doctor Dickinson, an animation piece set in 2024 in a world in which science didn’t find a covid vaccine. After Rey’s disturbing title, another medical issue will capture the audience’s attention: the Spanish premiere of Ghosts of the Ozarks, by independent cinema authors Matt Glass and Jordan Wayne Long. In this case, the story takes place in a faraway village of the Ozarks, Arkansas, in 1866, where a young doctor will find himself surrounded by supernatural presences. The film, according to its programmer, is “a Weird Western with echoes of the Southern Gothic and Folk Horror”.

The whole production during the second day will be Spanish, with a short film by David Muñoz and a feature film by David Hebrero, who will accompany Jesús Palacios during his introduction on Saturday April 30.

With My name is Koji, Muñoz pays tribute to a generation that was taken aback by Koji Kabuto and his powerful machine: Mazinger Z. The story, told from a humorous standpoint, presents Jacinto, number one fan of the anime, who notices that the statue of Mazinger Z starts speaking Japanese to him. The second film of the day and last of the section is David Hebrero’s second work, which will take the audience to a small village in Leon where a mother is about to take her life after being unable of overcoming the loss of her child. In the film Everyone Will Burn, starring Macarena Gómez, María José, the mourning mother, recovers hope and the courage to face the village that alienated her when Lucia appears, a child that may be related to a local legend about the apocalypse.

Friday April 29
10 PM. CINESA EL MUELLE. THE FREAKIEST NIGHT 1
The Amazing Vaccine of Doctor Dickinson (2020, 15 min., Spain) + Ghosts of the Ozarks (2021, 100 min., USA)
🎤 JESÚS PALACIOS

Saturday April 30
10 PM. CINESA EL MUELLE. THE FREAKIEST NIGHT 2
My name is Koji (2018, 10 min., Spain) + Everyone Will Burn (2021, 125 min., Spain)
🎤 JESÚS PALACIOS & DAVID HEBRERO