The international documentaries, horror stories, LGBTQ+ tales, genre films, and unclassifiable cinematic madness will take center stage in this year's special sections of the festival. @Midnight gathers the darkest and most distressing pieces of contemporary horror; Queer Dreams showcases a diverse range of queer stories; Genre Fever! selects from genre reinterpretations; while Weirdcore brings the most liberated, absurd, and hardest-to-categorize films to the festival.
In the selection of the @Midnight section, horror sometimes stems from the most intimate or mundane situations that could happen to any of us: family relationships, bodily anxieties, and a gradually overpowering psychological tension. In one of the stories, a wedding afterparty turns into a nightmarish evening, while other films explore the physical, visceral side of horror and the oppressive dynamics of close human relationships. The curator of this section is film director Bálint Dezső.
The queer section, consisting of two blocks (Queer Dreams I and Queer Dreams II), showcases the diversity of LGBTQ+ stories through sensitive and liberating films. The program features love triangles, complex relationships between athletes and coaches, and journeys of identity-seeking, while also focusing on questions of desire, physicality, and self-acceptance. The block pays special attention to the perspective of the older generation and less represented forms of intimacy. The program was curated by two former Friss Hús-winning creators, Bese Komáromy (director of Dead Weight / Dögsúly) and Borbála Nagy (director of Land of Praise / Pannónia dicsérete, and the recently released feature film Mambo Maternica).
In the Genre Fever! block, entertainment takes center stage: psychological obsession, political thriller, and claustrophobic horror story alternate in the program – so those who love clever reinterpretations, twisty stories, or simply want to laugh will certainly not be disappointed. In one of the films, for instance, two revolutionaries kidnap a politician's son to prevent a law from being passed, while other works lead the viewer into haunted houses, spaces filled with paranoia, and mounting psychological pressure. Out of hundreds of submitted works, Dániel Tiszeker (Nagykarácsony, Love Forgotten), one of the most successful domestic mainstream filmmakers, curated the selection.
The festival's most liberated and unclassifiable block is Weirdcore, which features extraterrestrial stories, queer horror, retro Eastern European visions, and absurd nightmares. In one of the selection's films, a family vacation gradually turns into a survival story filled with mummies; another connects female identity with Cold War paranoia; while the section's only Hungarian entry explores the strange relationship between a middle-aged man and his apartment. One of Friss Hús's most original programs praises the editorial work of Bálint Dezső.
The Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival awaits the audience between May 28 and June 3, 2026, at the Puskin Cinema and other venues. Tickets are already on sale.