Unnamed Footage Festival 2026 Announce Their First & Second Wave of Films

Posted on by Jim Cox

UNNAMED FOOTAGE FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES TWO WAVEs OF FILMS INCLUDING THE US PREMIERE OF THE DEVIL’S TEARDROP, WORLD PREMIERE OF LOOKY-LOO: PART II, BIG CITY PIZZA, AND SPECIAL EVENTS INCLUDING ARGATHER (2026) AND AN EVENING WITH DUTCH MARICH

The Found Footage Horror and In-World-Camera Film Festival returns to San Francisco March 24-29, 2026, with an extended schedule, new events and a collection of films that are guaranteed to terrify and delight.

 The Unnamed Footage Festival (UFF) team is excited to announce the second wave of films for its highly anticipated 9th edition, including more world premieres, new releases, and returning UFF alums.
Taking place from March 24th through March 29th, 2025, UFF9 will be presenting a series of special events in addition to a jam-packed program of found footage films.

Tuesday, March 24th, we’re partnering with the Alamo Drafthouse for an In-world-camera Terror Tuesday takeover as we present Ti West’s, THE SACRAMENT.

Wednesday, March 25th, we’ll be down the street at the Artists’ Television Access (ATA) for our annual Recalibration Party. Featuring a beer-goggled look back at in-world-camera films from 2025 with the Found Footage Power Hour, scouted and constructed by Found Footage Adventurer himself, Thomas Burke.

Saturday, March 28th, UFF is proud to present The ARGathering 2026! Hosted by Filmmaker, Documentarian, and Alternate Reality Game aficionado Alex Hera (What I Remember, The History of Analog Horror, Slenderverse: The Rise and Fall of Slenderman), ARGather2026 is an introduction to and celebration of Alternate Reality Games, featuring guest speakers, films, and activities to titillate fans of ARGs and new initiates alike.

On Sunday, March 29th, we’ll be wrapping up the fest with a pair of very special events. First, DieDie Books will be presenting a talk on Kenneth Anger’s seminal film Invocation of My Demon Brother. Hosted by author Jarrett Kobek (I Hate the Internet, Motor Spirit), the event will delve into the San Francisco-shot film that captures the dark side of the 1960s, and continues to intrigue audiences with its transgressive subject matter and bewildering cast that includes Mick Jagger, Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil and Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey. Then, to close out the fest, we’ll be hosting An Evening with Dutch Marich, where the Horror in the High Desert director will be talking about the series, answering questions, and hosting a secret screening of a film from his oeuvre. If you want to know what we’re showing, you’ll have to come out.

We’re also thrilled to announce our second round of feature film selections. First off, after premiering its predecessor in 2024, we’re proud to announce the World Premiere of Jason Zink’s LOOKY-LOO: PART II. Next up is the long-anticipated US Premiere of Gonzalo Otero’s Peru-set folk horror THE DEVIL’S TEARDROP. We’ll also be dipping into horror-comedy with Adam Meilech’s CONTENT. Continuing with the laughs, we’ll be showing Dusty Saunders’s absolutely bonkers BIG CITY PIZZA. Going back to horror, with Karsen Schovajsa, James Besse’s DIY gorefest THE KILLING CELL. Last but not least, we’re putting on our wizard hats and readying our 20-sided dice for Dan Brownlie’s GROUPCHAT, in which a zoom D&D session gets a little too real.

The complete schedule will be announced soon with more premieres, special events, and retro screenings. Badges are on sale now via FilmFreeway. Single screening and day passes coming soon!

FIRST WAVE OF UFF FILM SELECTIONS

PRIMAL DARKNESS (2026, dir. Dillon Brown) WORLD PREMIERE

With the Tahoe Joe trilogy complete, Dillon Brown (Tahoe Joe, Ghost, The Summer We Dies) returns to found footage with his most intense film yet. Hoping to kick off the second season of his series with a bang, hunting influencer Cole Harrington travels into the wilderness of Northern Nevada in search of a mountain lion that’s been menacing local livestock, but when he finds a camera belonging to a pair of missing hikers his hunting expedition becomes a fight for survival with something much more dangerous than a simple wildcat.
While his Tahoe Joe films embrace the goofiness of the regional cryptid, PRIMAL DARKNESS is pure horror, using the isolation and emptiness of Northern Nevada—and the area’s numerous abandoned mines—to craft a bleak tale of survival that is not to be missed.

FROGMAN RETURNS (2026, dir. Anthony Cousins)

In the sequel to his hit creature feature, Anthony Cousins (Frogman, Scare Package) delivers another buffet of frights and frogs in this creature-feature sequel. Featuring new and familiar faces alike, FROGMAN RETURNS picks up where Frogman left off. Delving into the lore of the Loveland Frogman, this sequel cranks everything up to eleven, guaranteeing a froggy fantasy filled with more frogmen than you can wave a magic wand at.

Frogs aside, Cousins’ background as a cinematographer shines through in this film, FROGMAN RETURNS adopts a far different style than its predecessor, eschewing the tracking lines and static of a Hi8 for a crisp, digital look, that lets it show off its amazing practical effects creatures.
Hail Frogman!

WE PUT THE WORLD TO SLEEP (2026, dir. Adrian Țofei)

Adrian and Duru get lost in the characters they play in an apocalyptic film and embark on a secret mission to end the world for real. What follows goes beyond their wildest imagination.
If you haven’t seen Adrian Țofei’s 2015 feature Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, stop reading and watch it right now. If you have seen it, you’ll know that Țofei is a master of the bizarre, and his newest film is no exception. The middle film of a spiritual trilogy that includes Be My Cat and the upcoming Pure, WE PUT THE WORLD TO SLEEP expands his confrontational style into something far more expansive. Shot over nearly a decade across Romania, Türkiye, and Ukraine, the film merges autofiction and layered reality games into a constantly shifting perspective piece. Rather than simply revisiting the confessional intimacy of Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, Țofei widens the frame to challenge what “captured reality” even means.

INFIRMARY (2025, dir. Nicholas Pineda)

When Edward, an ex-marine, takes a job as a security guard at the abandoned Wilshire Hospital, he expects to face long nights and the occasional vagrant, but instead finds himself thrown into a nightmare. Scheduled for demolition, the former mental hospital is a maze of labyrinthine hallways, and Edward’s night is only made worse by a mysterious prowler, a sinister hospital administrator, and a slew of medical dummies that refuse to stay put. As tension mounts, Edward’s new job turns into a terrifying fight for survival with forces he can barely comprehend.
Nicholas Pineda’s directorial debut is a found footage tour de force, sporting a stellar central performance from lead actor Paul Syre (Smoking Tigers, Badly in Love) and an unforgettable locale, INFIRMARY is sure to delight found footage fans looking for a scare.

DON’T LOOK IN THE DARK (2026, dir. Samuel Freeman)

During a camping trip to Pinelands National Reserve, a couple’s cellphones mysteriously refuse to stop recording. What at first appears to be a benign software malfunction, the pair quickly realize that something inexplicable lurks in the woods, and whatever it is, it wants to be seen.
DON’T LOOK IN THE DARK is The Blair Witch Project for a post-Skinamarink audience. Highly experimental and taking advantage of vertical recording, intense shaky cam, and long stretches of darkness broken only by the panicked sounds of the film’s protagonists, Samuel Freeman’s directorial debut derives horror not only from the couple’s circumstances, but from the very way we interact with technology in a world where everyone has a camera.

HERITAGE (2026, dir. Baptist Agostini-Croce) WORLD PREMIERE

Fifteen years after leaving Corsica, Marie and Daniel return to visit their elderly grandfather. Looking to capture their reunion, they pick up the family camcorder, but what they uncover is far from what they expected. With its stylized combination of camcorder and archival footage, HERITAGE is a verisimilitudinous journey into Corsica, as it follows an array of misfits as it explores the isolation, ennui, and unwelcomeness they feel in their own island home.
Steeped in Corsican folklore, HERITAGE cements first-time filmmaker Baptist Agostini-Croce as a powerful new voice in found footage. Between its grounded, nigh-improvisational performances from local Corsican actors and footage captured on an actual consumer camcorder, HERITAGE evokes the found footage yore, and channels the raw immediacy that first captivated found footage horror audiences.

SECOND WAVE OF UFF FILM SELECTIONS

looky-loo: PART II (2026, dir Jason Zink) WORLD PREMIERE

Continuing where the first film left off, the looky-loo killer’s newfound infamy encourages him to push his crimes to further extremes as he documents his sadistic ventures, adding a new metatextual element to the film.
Jason Zink (Straight Edge Kegger, looky-loo) returns to San Francisco with his second journey into Found Footage Horror. Expanding his world while ensuring Part II stands firmly on its own, Zink welcomes newcomers into a nightmare of voyeurism, obsession, and the commodification of human suffering. Teaming up with fellow UFF8 alum Kansas Bowling (Cuddly Toys, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood) and bringing her singular presence to this unfiltered Midwestern horror, looky-loo: PART II doesn’t simply ask you to watch. It asks what it means that you want to.

THE DEVIL’S TEARDROP (2025, dir Gonzalo Otero) US PREMIERE

Sarah, a young American, convinces her three friends – Isaac, Jackie, and Horacio – to assist in completing her audacious ecological documentary. Their journey takes them deep into the shadowy world of illegal mining in an enigmatic Peruvian forest. Upon arrival, locals vehemently caution them against approaching the forest or the mining town, citing the presence of the Supay – an ancient being from Andean mythology capable of taking various forms and remaining unnoticed to attack intruders.

Initially dismissing these warnings as ploys to conceal illegal activities, the group defiantly breaches the prohibition, venturing into the forbidden territory. However, they swiftly realize the chilling myths hold genuine and terrifying truths, along with the actual purpose of their presence – a revelation that will forever alter their fates.

CONTENT (2025, dir Adam Meilech)

Shown exclusively through real phones, laptops, drones, and doorbell cameras, CONTENT follows a seemingly polite director whose commitment to “authenticity” curdles into obsession.

Shot for under $3,000 by a scrappy team of University of Arizona film school alumni, Meilech’s debut feature is an independent found footage satire of online performativity. Using real screens, real locations, and a crew that often doubles as the cast, the film leans into immediacy and voyeurism to capture the hyper-online world we inhabit. Rejecting the notion that phones and text threads are “un-cinematic,” CONTENT weaponizes the familiarity of webcams and front-facing cameras – placing us directly in the gaze of a stalking, maniacal filmmaker and daring us to look away.

BIG CITY PIZZA (2025, dir. Dusty Saunders)

The Omni Ball Championship is here and tensions are rising in the big city. Meanwhile Boney, a pizza delivery skeleton, is just trying to make it through one increasingly impossible night.

Inspired by the experimental animation of Don Hertzfeldt, and constructed with the theory of Ian Hubert – who’s known for his hyper detailed world building. BIG CITY PIZZA is an exciting addition to the genre of in-world-camera, skeleton POV, One take, Animated, features.

THE KILLING CELL (2025, dir. Karsen Schovajsa, James Besse)

In the summer of 2006, five teenagers break into an abandoned prison that is supposedly haunted. As they explore the place, they discover that what inhabits it is much more dangerous than the paranormal.

Co-directors Karsen Schovajsa and James Bessey bring years of tenacious genre experience to their feature debut. Schovajsa, whose shorts have played festivals including Atlanta Horrorfest and Tuesday of Horror (where he received a Best Horror Short nomination), proved his DIY mettle shooting The Devil’s Hour on 35mm in a single day. Bessey, with a background working crew for major studios like Warner Bros. and Marvel while crafting tense, character-driven shorts of his own, pairs industry know-how with indie grit. Together, the duo have created a Hi 8 urban adventure that feels like a microbudget German gore film.

GROUPCHAT (2025, dir. Dan Brownlie)

A grieving game master’s new online role-playing adventure spirals into a deadly reality, trapping players in a supernatural fight for survival.
Told entirely through screens, webcams, and in-game interfaces, GROUPCHAT embraces its tabletop DNA while weaponizing the intimacy of digital space. Brownlie leans into the chaos of online collaboration, blurring performance and panic in real time. The result is a screenlife RPG session set during the Halloween season, something UFF thinks is long overdue.

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