Official Selection for the 2026 Fantastic Vertical Cinema Showcase

The Fantastic Pavilion, Blood Window and Mórbido are happy to present the Official Selection for the 2026 Fantastic Vertical Cinema Showcase, focused on horror, fantasy, thriller and science fiction works in the vertical 9:16 format.

Happening within the Marché du Film in Cannes, the Fantastic Vertical Cinema Showcase brings together 28 projects that demonstrate something the industry has been slow to acknowledge: that genre filmmakers are the least afraid of formal risk, and that the vertical format is not a limitation, it’s a new kind of dread for the age of mobile consumption and digital platforms.

“The Fantastic Vertical Cinema Showcase exists because we believe a great horror story told in 9:16 is still a great horror story. The window is different. The dread is the same.” — Pablo Guisa Koestinger, Founder & Executive Director, Fantastic Pavilion.

TAG (Mads Erichsen, Denmark)

Genre: Horror.

Nahuales (Alejandro Cervantes, Mexico)

Genres: Horror, fantasy, thriller.

Snapshot (Joseph Archer, UK)

Genres: Horror, thriller.

My Father’s Son (Miguel Angel Ferrer, USA)

Genres: Science fiction, horror.

Late Night With Me (Baris Fert, Turkey)

Genre: Horror.

A Girl and Her Demons (Brian and Laurence Avenet-Bradley, USA)

Genres: Horror, thriller.

Tower of Hunger (Kuang Hui, China)

Genres: Science fiction, action, fantasy.

Witness (Lex Ortega, Mexico)

Genre: Horror.

WANA (Quetzalli Bulnes, Mexico)

Genres: Horror, thriller.

Again (Anastasia Sidorova, UK)

Genres: Horror, thriller.

Chat GPTerror (Daniel Escobedo, Mexico)

Genre: Horror.

The Offering (Carlos Meléndez, Mexico)

Genre: Horror.

Dracula Wants to Die (Mauricio Peralta, Chile)

Genres: Horror, drama.

Garlic Clove (Iñaki Aguilar, Spain)

Genres: Horror, fantasy, erotic.

Blind Alley (Carlos Meléndez, Mexico)

Genre: Horror.

Golden Tomb Seeker (Yifan Zhang, Ran Ou, Yong Chen, China)

Genres: Action, fantasy.

Bitten Soon (Lauand Omar, Germany)

Genres: Horror, comedy.

Internal Fatal Error (Elías Nathan, Ecuador)

Genre: Psychological horror.

Fruit (Cristiano Sousa, Brazil)

Genre: Horror.

Alley (Pablo Camaiti, Leandro Mark, Argentina-Uruguay)

Genres: Horror, thriller.

The Walkers (Marcel Rutschmann, Mozambique)

Genres: Horror, comedy.

The Cartagena Fantastic Alliance

From its inception, the Fantastic Vertical Cinema Showcase was designed as a global initiative. Last April, during the 65th edition of the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival (FICCI), both the launch of Cartagena Fantastic – a partnership with Mórbido and AG Studios – and the Vertical Cinema call took place. In addition to receiving completed micro-stories, five teams from three countries (Colombia, Mexico, Peru) recorded their vertical genre works on location in the Caribbean city.

Here’s the final selection from the Vertical Cinema call.

“When discussing changes in formats and consumption habits, genre is the field with the least fear of taking aesthetic and formal risks. From this perspective, for a festival like FICCI, which is characterized by its focus on emerging Ibero-American talent, the creation of a space like Cartagena Fantastic is only logical. The rest is made possible by the partners found along the way to conspire with: Mórbido, AG Studios, and of course, the Fantastic Pavilion, allies with the same drive and the necessary degree of madness to call for the challenge of narrating through genre and verticality, from Colombia, the micro-stories that bring us to the Pavilion today.” — Mónica Moya, Director of Industry, FICCI.