The Minnesota Genre Film Exposition celebrates imagination and creativity in independent film! We're looking for horror, sci-fi, fantasy, surrealist, magical realist--all things weird and wonderful.

Highbrow, lowbrow, middlebrow, serious, funny, scary, gory, super-polished or DIY-grimy, we love it all.

There will be awards for the following categories:

Best Horror Feature Film
Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Feature Film
Best Short Film (less than 15 minutes)
Best Short Film (15 to 30 minutes)
Audience Favorite - Feature Film
Audience Favorite - Short Film (less than 15 minutes)
Audience Favorite - Short Film (15 to 30 minutes)
MNGFE Special Mention

Films must have been completed in the past 2 years.
Films must be unreleased, or available to festivals only.
Premiere status is not required, but premiere status may be taken into consideration.
The applicant holds the sole responsibility of copyright clearance of any copyrighted material in the film.
No films created by AI, in whole or part.
The applicant owns all rights to the film.
No fan films (films based on someone else's intellectual property)
The MNGFE has the right to use a trailer, stills, pics and posters for promotional purposes in print, social media, websites, etc.
Entry fees are non-refundable.
English subtitles are required for foreign language films. Films in English do not require subtitles.
The festival will only communicate with the submitter of the film project.
Submissions cannot be withdrawn after the announcement of the official selection.

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Mike Davis

    What an amazing kick off for what will hopefully be a long running fest! Josh, Matt and Charlie took great care in putting together a fantastic and courageous programming of weird and wondrous cutting edge genre flicks. Communication was great and the venue looked awesome- I will be submitting again and can hopefully attend in person. Thanks again for including DEAD, WHITE AND BLUE!

    November 2025
  • Owen Swerkstrom

    We were only able to attend a sliver of the festival, but it was a real treat to see some wild and fantastic local films. We hope the festival keeps running; we'd love to participate and/or attend again.

    October 2025
    Response from festival:

    Thanks for coming! I'm so glad you had a good time. We're planning a bigger better return next year!