{"id":22577,"date":"2025-04-15T09:24:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T09:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/la-noche-freak-rescata-el-cine-mas-terrorifico-y-gamberro-oculto-bajo-el-radar-del-establishment\/"},"modified":"2025-05-04T11:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T11:12:07","slug":"la-noche-freak-rescata-el-cine-mas-terrorifico-y-gamberro-oculto-bajo-el-radar-del-establishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/la-noche-freak-rescata-el-cine-mas-terrorifico-y-gamberro-oculto-bajo-el-radar-del-establishment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Freakiest Night rescues the wildest and most terrifying cinema hidden under the establishment\u2019s radar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2022 Programmer Jes\u00fas Palacios claims that \u201cold freaks should die once and for all,\u201d before bringing with him a selection featuring Lovecraftian animation, psychological horrors, new Chinese sci-fi and a memorable Dutch black comedy<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nLas Palmas de Gran Canaria, Tuesday, April 15, 2025.- \u201cOld freaks should die once and for all.\u201d But that\u2019s not a reason for the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival to lose its nationally famous The Freakiest Night<\/strong>. With such a provoking claim, Jes\u00fas Palacios, the programmer and driving force behind this iconic section, begins a declaration of love for the genre that \u2018morbidly\u2019 attempts to \u201cchange the observer\u2019s way of looking at things\u201d by offering two truly wild sessions at Cine Yelmo Las Arenas on consecutive nights, those of Friday, May 2, and Saturday, May 3.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Palacios invites the audience to \u201cplunge, holding our breath, into the murky, dirty, soupy waters of digital platforms,\u201d where he has found the works comprising this 2025 selection: Lovecraftian animation, new minimalist psychological horror, young Chinese sci-fi, teenage transvestite romantic comedy, one or two orgies of very bad taste or the most vulgar Dutch comedy anyone might suffer in a movie theater.<\/p>\n

Nothing out of the ordinary in Jes\u00fas Palacios\u2019 The Freakiest Night<\/em>, a ground-breaking space in the true sense of such a hackneyed term as that of B movies, the Pulp, which was built around superhero stories or Amazing-Stories-style space adventures. Thus, the programmer of the section keeps daring to take risks and innovate while maintaining the same spirit the audience of the Festival has enjoyed for so many years.<\/p>\n

Spanish and Chinese productions for the first night<\/strong><\/p>\n

The responsibility of opening the section has fallen this year on two Spanish short films. The first one, Helen<\/em><\/strong>, by Helio Mira (Spain, 2024, 9 min.), is a horror animated piece inspired by H. P. Lovecraft\u2019s Cthulhu Mythos<\/em>, a key author within the freak fandom. This short film is part of the adult animation anthology The Ages of Madness<\/em> and has earned recognition at festivals such as Madriff or the Slash Eyes International Film Festival.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Talk to Strangers<\/strong><\/em>, by Imanol Ortiz L\u00f3pez (Spain, 2023, 5 min.), has already appeared, scaring their audiences, at festivals such as Montreal, Brooklyn or Molins de Rey. This nerve-shattering piece, based on a short story by Peruvian writer Fernando Iwasaki, follows a young girl who decides to trust a stranger that gives her treats.<\/p>\n

The first night will close with the feature film Escape From the 21st Century<\/em><\/strong> | Cong 21 Shi Ji an Quan Che Li<\/em>, by Yang Li (China, 2024, 98 min.). This sci-fi Chinese adventure tells the story of three teenagers who mysteriously gain the ability to travel 20 years into the future and back every time they sneeze. Despite its limited budget, the film seamlessly blends live-action with 2D animation, creating a striking visual experience.<\/p>\n

A second night to the greater glory of Nick Frost<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meat Puppet<\/em><\/strong>, by Eros V. (United Kingdom, 2024, 12 min.) is the short film that\u2019ll open the second night of this irreverent section. It has already been nominated and awarded at events such as the British Independent Film Awards, the Neuch\u00e2tel International Fantastic Film Festival, the SXSW Film Festival or the Fantasy Filmfest. In it, its main character gets his soul trapped inside an old stuffed puppet, \u201cthe most ingenious diabolical puppet short film in history,\u201d according to Jes\u00fas Palacios.<\/p>\n

The programmer will close its 2025 selection with the Dutch Krazy House<\/strong><\/em>, by Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kull (Netherlands, 2024, 87 min.), a film full of surprises starring Alicia Silverstone, Kevin Connolly and one of the freak audience\u2019s favorite actors: Nick Frost, who shines on his own merit in the feature. This satire shows us what happens when someone hires to repair their house a gang of Russian criminals who only want to tear it down.<\/p>\n

With his characteristic passion, Palacios stands by his work in the trenches in order to bring to The Freakiest Night<\/em> a nice selection of pieces far removed from commercial theaters\u2014as well as from the Oscars or the Goyas\u2014that nonetheless allow his section to \u201ccontinue to do the dirty work, delving into the crypts of current cinema.\u201d Because, after all, \u201cfreak cinema, true freak cinema, most definitely exists.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2022 Programmer Jes\u00fas Palacios claims that \u201cold freaks should die once and for all,\u201d before bringing with him a selection featuring Lovecraftian animation, psychological horrors, new Chinese sci-fi and a memorable Dutch black comedy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":22572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[401],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}