Rotterdam's 2027 Focus Programmes Put Analog Horror in the Spotlight
The International Film Festival Rotterdam has unveiled the Focus programmes for its 2027 edition, and the lineup opens with a spotlight on analog horror. The Hollywood Reporter reported the announcement on 12 November 2026.
Analog horror is scary fiction made to look like old video. It uses fuzzy tape, static and found footage, as if someone had dug the material out of a dusty box. The festival's section is called Analog Nightmares 2.0. IFFR described two recent horror hits, Obsession and Backrooms, as signs that the style has moved into the mainstream.
The section includes Joshua Garity's The Space Between, which will have its world premiere there. It also screens the concluding episode of Midwest Angelica: Landfall, a YouTube series from AQ Studio. Three more titles complete the slate: La Mancha by Ramiro Garcia Bogliano and Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Dance Freak by Robby Rackleff and Alan Resnick, and Smile Guide by Wiktor Stribog.
The festival is also devoting a spotlight to Jordan Strafer, a U.S. artist and filmmaker. His Talk Show is the final film in the Loophole trilogy, and it will be presented at IFFR 2027.
Other sections honour people tied to the festival's history. Slovenian filmmaker Andrej Zdravic will feature in the Shorts Focus programme. The late Simon Field, a former IFFR director, will be remembered through his What (is) Cinema? series. The festival will also celebrate the six-decade career of Swedish producer Kalle Boman.
Focus programmes group films around a theme, a filmmaker or a career, so a festival visitor can follow one thread through the week. This year's threads run from scary found-footage films to short work, a trilogy finale, a series of talks and screenings, and a producer's long career. Each strand puts a different kind of filmmaking in front of an audience.
Rotterdam sits among the big festivals where films first meet the people who will show and sell them, so the programme is a first look at what those audiences will see. The festival's full schedule and dates will determine when each title can be seen.
