Nightmares Film Festival has announced its Night Mare award recipients for 2019, recognizing the dark horses of genre filmmaking and screenwriting.

Leading the 26 prizes awarded was the Film From Hell, recognizing the movie that most bravely pushes genre boundaries, given to Scott Philip Goergens’s harrowing psychosexual thriller 29 Needles.

“The 2019 Nightmares program was full of extraordinary, surprising and shocking new genre films, and our Night Mare awards recognize the very best of that lineup,” said co-founder and programmer Jason Tostevin.

Other films taking leading prizes included Lisa Ovies’s Canadian horror-comedy Puppet Killer, awarded best overall feature, and Andrea’s Corsin feral horror story Ferine, awarded best overall short. In the screenplay competition, Avishai Weinberger’s “Third Date” took the best feature script, and Shayna Connelly’s “Love as Practice for Dying” won best short script.

Several award winners are being considered for acquisition by attending distributors, including Gunpowder & Sky’s ALTER. All winning short films will be offered home and online distribution through Bloody Disgusting’s showcase channel, World of Death.

Competition films and screenplays competed for the coveted Night Mare statuette, representing the dark horses of the genre. The Night Mare is sculpted and hand-painted each year by the renowned toy and figure creator Tony Simione (Marvel, Star Wars, Godzilla, Alien).

Nightmares Film Festival has been called one of the world’s best horror film festivals by every major genre outlet. It has maintained its position as the world’s top-rated genre festival on the submission platform FilmFreeway for 36 consecutive months.

Submissions for Nightmares Film Festival 2020 will open in November.  Check out the full list of winners below.

NFF 19 Awards

The Film from Hell

29 Needles

FEATURES

Best Overall Feature

Puppet Killer

Best Horror Feature

Z

Best ThrillerFeature

Reckoning

Best Midnight Feature

The Obsessed

Best Director Feature

Beyond Horror

Best Horror-Comedy Feature

Scare Package

Best Cinematography Feature

To Your Last Death

Best Writing in a Feature

A Nun’s Curse

Best Actor Feature

Tim Loden – Making Monsters

Best Actress Feature

Nicole Brydon Bloom – 1BR

SHORTS

Best Overall Short

Ferine

Best Horror Short

Tick

Best Thriller Short

Gaslight

Best Midnight Short

VR Food

Best Recurring Nightmare

Let Me Play

Best Director Short

Imagine a World

Best Cinematography Short

Daughter of Dismay

Best Writing in a Short

Boo

Best Actor Short

Baker Chase Powell – We Die Alone

Best Actress Short

Synead Nichold – Sasquatch

Best Horror Comedy Short

Inflatio

Screenplays

Best Short Screenplay

Love as Practice for Dying

First runner-up: “Gender Reveal Party”

Second runner-up: “Mary, Dispossessed”

Best Feature Screenplay

Third Date

First runner-up: “He Brings the Night”

Second runner-up: “No Overnight Parking”

Additional Awards

Best Ohio Film

Look Twice

First runner-up: Madness