• Programmer Jesús Palacios claims that “old freaks should die once and for all,” before bringing with him a selection featuring Lovecraftian animation, psychological horrors, new Chinese sci-fi and a memorable Dutch black comedy
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Tuesday, April 15, 2025.- “Old freaks should die once and for all.” But that’s not a reason for the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival to lose its nationally famous The Freakiest Night. With such a provoking claim, Jesús Palacios, the programmer and driving force behind this iconic section, begins a declaration of love for the genre that ‘morbidly’ attempts to “change the observer’s way of looking at things” by offering two truly wild sessions at Cine Yelmo Las Arenas on consecutive nights, those of Friday, May 2, and Saturday, May 3.
Palacios invites the audience to “plunge, holding our breath, into the murky, dirty, soupy waters of digital platforms,” where he has found the works comprising this 2025 selection: Lovecraftian animation, new minimalist psychological horror, young Chinese sci-fi, teenage transvestite romantic comedy, one or two orgies of very bad taste or the most vulgar Dutch comedy anyone might suffer in a movie theater.
Nothing out of the ordinary in Jesús Palacios’ The Freakiest Night, a ground-breaking space in the true sense of such a hackneyed term as that of B movies, the Pulp, which was built around superhero stories or Amazing-Stories-style space adventures. Thus, the programmer of the section keeps daring to take risks and innovate while maintaining the same spirit the audience of the Festival has enjoyed for so many years.
Spanish and Chinese productions for the first night
The responsibility of opening the section has fallen this year on two Spanish short films. The first one, Helen, by Helio Mira (Spain, 2024, 9 min.), is a horror animated piece inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, a key author within the freak fandom. This short film is part of the adult animation anthology The Ages of Madness and has earned recognition at festivals such as Madriff or the Slash Eyes International Film Festival.
Don’t Talk to Strangers, by Imanol Ortiz López (Spain, 2023, 5 min.), has already appeared, scaring their audiences, at festivals such as Montreal, Brooklyn or Molins de Rey. This nerve-shattering piece, based on a short story by Peruvian writer Fernando Iwasaki, follows a young girl who decides to trust a stranger that gives her treats.
The first night will close with the feature film Escape From the 21st Century | Cong 21 Shi Ji an Quan Che Li, by Yang Li (China, 2024, 98 min.). This sci-fi Chinese adventure tells the story of three teenagers who mysteriously gain the ability to travel 20 years into the future and back every time they sneeze. Despite its limited budget, the film seamlessly blends live-action with 2D animation, creating a striking visual experience.
A second night to the greater glory of Nick Frost
Meat Puppet, by Eros V. (United Kingdom, 2024, 12 min.) is the short film that’ll open the second night of this irreverent section. It has already been nominated and awarded at events such as the British Independent Film Awards, the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, the SXSW Film Festival or the Fantasy Filmfest. In it, its main character gets his soul trapped inside an old stuffed puppet, “the most ingenious diabolical puppet short film in history,” according to Jesús Palacios.
The programmer will close its 2025 selection with the Dutch Krazy House, by Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kull (Netherlands, 2024, 87 min.), a film full of surprises starring Alicia Silverstone, Kevin Connolly and one of the freak audience’s favorite actors: Nick Frost, who shines on his own merit in the feature. This satire shows us what happens when someone hires for reforming their house a gang of Russian criminals who only want to tear it down.
With his characteristic passion, Palacios stands by his work in the trenches in order to bring to The Freakiest Night a nice selection of pieces far removed from commercial theaters—as well as from the Oscars or the Goyas—that nonetheless allow his section to “continue to do the dirty work, delving into the crypts of current cinema.” Because, after all, “freak cinema, true freak cinema, most definitely exists.”
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