The 16th SLASH Film Festival begins in two months’ time and will present the latest standouts of international and Austrian genre cinema, classics and rediscovered curiosities. The first five film highlights give a foretaste of what sharp hooks this year’s festival program has in store:
Addison Heimann delivers a hefty dose of alien sex with her wonderfully bizarre, psychosexual horror comedy TOUCH ME: Two best friends fall for the touches of an extraterrestrial named Brian, who may not only be after orgasms, but also world domination.
TOUCH ME (2025 US, R: Addison Heimann)
Ben Leonberg’s GOOD BOY, for which he cast his own four-pawed companion Indy, is a must-see for dog lovers. Based on the question of why dogs sometimes bark into the void or stare into space for seemingly no reason, the director spins a delightful yet creepy haunted house story from the four-legged friend’s perspective – and reveals that he perceives a lot more than we would like.
GOOD BOY (2025 US, R: Ben Leonberg)
In Julia Kowalski’s atmospheric folk horror drama HER WILL BE DONE, quiet Naw dreams of escaping her harsh life on the farm and the bullying of her brothers. But when she meets the mysterious Sandra, she begins to experience trance-like episodes and develop the same strange powers as her deceased mother.
HER WILL BE DONE (2025 FR/PL, R: Julia Kowalski)
MARCO is billed as the most brutal Indian film of all time, and a TV premiere on national television was blocked by the authorities. Director Haneef Adeni shows no restraint in this truly ultra-bloody action thriller and sends the eponymous hero on an infernal vendetta after the murder of his brother.
MARCO (2024 IN, R: Haneef Adeni)
Inspired by Werner Herzog’s statement that a computer could not make a film as good as his own in 4,500 years, Polish filmmaker Piotr Winiewicz fed an AI model exclusively with the legendary director’s oeuvre and had him calculate the story for the experimental crime-mystery ABOUT A HERO – with an AI Herzog as narrator and the real Vicky Krieps in a supporting role. Creepy.
ABOUT A HERO (2024 DK/US, R: Piotr Winiewicz)