A Horror Festival Built Around Disability Is Streaming Until November 1

A horror festival that puts disability at the centre of its programme is running online now, and it stays open until Sunday, November 1. Access: Horror, a virtual film festival, began its 2026 programme on Sunday, October 4, according to Rue Morgue. The festival was founded and is co-directed by Ariel Baska, with Heather Petrocelli as the other co-director.

Baska is a filmmaker, festival director and speaker on accessibility. They say they are deaf-blind and have mobility impairments, and that in-person networking events in the film industry were hard for them to reach. Before moving into film, Baska spent 15 years teaching Latin. The festival was created in 2023, according to Variety, which first reported on the event.

The 2026 festival is built around 19 films and filmmaker question-and-answer sessions. Viewers can watch everything on the FilmChief streaming platform. A ticket costs $20, according to the festival's own promotion on Instagram. The lineup is split into three blocks: Edibles, The Body Keeps the Score, and Dead Darlings. Featured titles include Lee Cleaveland's Everhand, Charlie Gillette's Tal and Priscilla Galvez's A Fermenting Woman.

Access is built into the viewing itself. The organisers give filmmakers content warnings, captions and audio descriptions, and they work to make each film easier to watch for people with different needs. Baska has said the festival's central idea is that ableism is the thing that frightens, not disability. In other words, the horror comes from how society treats disabled people, rather than from disabled bodies or minds.

That idea runs through Baska's other public work. In July, the Portland Art Museum hosted a programme of short films by Baska, and the event offered assistive listening devices on request, along with wheelchair-accessible spaces and restrooms. Baska also writes about wheelchair access, open captions and sensory accessibility in film spaces. Those are the same concerns that shape how Access: Horror is run.

For anyone curious about the genre, the festival is an easy place to start. It is online, it runs for another two weeks or so, and the access features are there for viewers who need them. The full schedule of screenings and Q&As is on the festival's website.