2021 sees the 17th year of the SA HorrorFest, the only all-encompassing Halloween-season Horror event on the African continent, including its main film festival component with feature films and short films from around the world (featuring many premieres), plus a short story competition (resulting in best-of anthologies published) as well as a live author event, Halloween dress-up, live movie soundtrack performance to classic silent films and more.
With a selection of movies to receive cinema screenings, the bulk of the hybrid festival will be on-line (filmmakers deciding whether they want their movies to be geo-blocked for Africa only, or whether they'd like it to be accessible all over the world as part of the festival's Global Horrorfest).
All genre variants accepted, as long as it contains Horror elements.

Join us at all our social media locations to stay in the loop on all festival developments, news and more, and subscribe at our new YouTube channel The Horrorfest where we feature all selected movie trailers, as well as filmmaker interviews and all manner of Horror culture.
All links accessible at https://linktr.ee/SAhorrorfest

Awards & Prizes

The highest quality movies are acknowledged with award certificates across a wide range of categories.

Rules & Terms

After the pandemic the Horrorfest was forced on-line. This component will remain going forward, making it a hybrid event with both cinema and on-line shows.

There are no restrictions for the production's country of origin.
All languages allowed, but need (hardcoded) English subtitles if in another language.

Flamedrop Productions / Shadow Realm inc., and the South African HorrorFest cannot guarantee that the short- or feature films submitted will be selected and shown in public / on-line, as the festival selection members / committee will be the final arbiters.

If selected, you also agree to grant the Horrorfest non-exclusive permission to prospectively screen your feature film / short film after the official festival date as part of an Encore Best-Of replay program (including a selection of nominees and category winners).

Permission must be granted from the relevant rights holders (where applicable) of any copyrighted material used in your production (eg. music, film, video, news, audio, clips from other sources etc.), and the organizers of the South African HorrorFest cannot be held liable for the unlawful use of such material in submitted works.

Real pornography, human or animal abuse will not be tolerated and such entries will be discarded, and if necessary, reported.

(With the niche nature of the event and all budget going into promotion of the festival, unfortunately screening fees cannot be offered)

If additional physical materials are supplied to the SA HorrorFest (discs, flash drives, external drives), these are non-returnable.

Information supplied on your production will be used in various Flamedrop Productions / Shadow Realm inc. / SA HorrorFest online and print publications as promotion.
11 Reviews
Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Henk Lambert Pretorius

    Excellent festival and very well organised. Overall a great experience.

    February 2021
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    Response from festival:

    Thanks so much Henk, hope to see more of your work in the future!

  • Tim Luna

    This was my second or third time I had a short or feature film @ this amazing festival. We (the team) felt very honored that our short film The Taxi Dead was chosen for the program 2020. Unfortunately, we couldn't be there ourselves, but were well informed and were able to follow the course of the festival online. We had a great communication and had the feeling the festival take care for us and everyone. Thanks for the support!

    February 2021
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    Response from festival:

    We were very glad to include your work Luca!
    Thanks for the kind words.

  • Richie Valentino

    Honored to be a part of a great festival and an excellent collection of films too.
    Thank you.

    November 2020
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    Response from festival:

    Thanks so much for submitting Richie!

  • Avery Guerra

    An awesome festival! Great communication and organization. The crew at South African HorrorFest definitely love what they're doing and it shows. They put on a great show with an incredibly diverse and outrageous line-up. Highly recommended!

    November 2020
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    Response from festival:

    Thank you Avery!

  • Ivan Basov

    We indie filmmakers have to make up our own motivation for festival submissions a lot of times (more so in 2020), and the SA HorrorFest makes it soooo easy. If you get in, that means your fantastic genre film has snatched the only meaningful opportunity to be shown on the vast continent of Africa. Things don't get cooler than that! The program is just as vast as the landmass, and the perseverance deserves much respect (even in the COVID times the festival managed to squeeze in a few proper theater screenings), and the event ran for 2 weeks straight! That's some class. Unfortunately, due to the security reasons it wasn't possible to get a free virtual pass to see things, and we couldn't do any networking, but all of these downsides were compensated by our short winning the Best Screenplay award. Astounding. Awesome. Unbelievable. Huge, Cthulhu-sized thanks to Paul, Sonja, and the whole team.

    November 2020
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    Response from festival:

    Hey, it's a pleasure!
    Thanks Ivan!