Dolly
Part of Nacht der 1000 Messer
The frame narrative of this gloriously grimy riff on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would fit on any soiled bib: A young woman named Macy (Fabienne Therese) is abducted in the woods by a monstrous person wearing a ceramic mask and must henceforth cosplay as a baby. Rod Blackhurst’s Dolly is a highly effective, bizarrely comical abomination of a movie that’s shocking not only because of the memorable killer-mommy performance of wrestler Max the Impaler aka The Non-Binary Nightmare. Equally fun: Seann William “Stifler” Scott as Macy’s tormented boyfriend. (Matthias Eckkrammer)
OPENING SHORT FILM
Tasty Encounters
Luke Röber, AT, 2025, 8′, OmeU
World Premiere
In desperation, a hungry man orders a pizza that seems to be out of this world. A feast of the extraterrestrial kind.
Rod Blackhurst is a genre-agnostic filmmaker who grew up without a TV, toured with a rock band for four years and got his start in action sports directing ski films. He has directed a number of award-winning shorts, including the SXSW official selection Would You as well as Mommy, Alone Time, and Hysteric. Rod is the director of the Netflix original documentary Amanda Knox and NatGeo’s Welcome to Earth, and his sci-fi thriller Here Alone won him the Audience Award at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. In 2023, he directed Kit Harrington in the action thriller Blood for Dust. Dolly, his most recent narrative feature, premiered at Fantastic Fest. Together with his partner Noah Lang, Rod also runs a film and television studio, Witchcraft Motion Picture Company.
