After nine years of absence, the Samain of Fantastic Cinema has reemerged on the French Riviera. Last week, the festival gathered filmmakers from around the world in Nice and Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Screenings, tributes, and discoveries marked this edition, which was under the sign of the renewal of genre cinema.
The festival had disappeared from the screens in Nice since 2016. This year, it returned to the dark rooms between the Jean-Paul Belmondo and Pathé Masséna cinemas, before continuing in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Created in 2010 by the Les Méduses association, the Samain of Fantastic Cinema is dedicated to the strange, horror, and science fiction. For its 2025 edition, it brought back into the limelight the creativity of genre cinema and the meeting between young directors and the audience.
The festival team reminds that “the Samain reaffirms its vocation: to unveil new voices in genre cinema through its international feature and short film competitions.” Over four days, screenings followed one another, mixing films in competition, revisited classics, and premieres.
Among the highlights in Nice, the audience discovered Queens of the Dead, the first feature film by Tina Romero, daughter of the director of Night of the Living Dead. Supported by the Les Ouvreurs association, the film promises “a jubilant and decidedly queer horror comedy, a true ode to diversity, underground culture, and the spirit of New York nights.”
Another highly anticipated premiere: It Ends, by Alex Ullom, shown for the first time in France. The film has already won awards at the Fantasia Festival and won the Best Film and Best Director Prize in Nice. In this first feature film, “four friends are trapped on an endless highway in a waking nightmare.”
The Best Screenplay Prize, awarded ex aequo, went to The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick by Pete Ohs and The Other People by Chad McClarnon. The latter, also shown in Nice, plunges into a “claustrophobic and thrilling story, inspired by real events.”
The awards also honored Kombucha by Jake Myers, named Best Horror Film, and Queens of the Dead, awarded a second time as Best Horror Comedy. On the side of short films, Loud by Adam Azimov won the Best Short Film Prize, while Whitch by Hoku Uchiyama stood out as Best Horror Short Film.
Between Legacy and Renewal
Beyond the awards, this edition confirmed the vitality of genre cinema. Special screenings paid tribute to the classics. Evil Dead 2 attracted the nostalgic in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, while in Nice, Aix-en-Provence novelist Stéphan Sanchez presented I Know What You Did Last Summer as part of a carte blanche at the Jean-Paul Belmondo cinema.
The Samain of Fantastic Cinema also sought to reconnect with its audience. Animations, happenings, and costume interventions punctuated the sessions, reinforcing the festive and collective spirit. The organizers focused on proximity: a festival designed for the people of Nice but open to all curious about the fantastical.
The event was aligned with the tradition of great horror and suspense storytellers. It “continues to celebrate entertainment in all its forms, in the legacy of genre masters like William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock.” This popular approach, combined with artistic rigor, allowed “the Samain” to reestablish itself as a place of exchanges and discoveries.
Organized between Nice and Beaulieu-sur-Mer, this event aims to “establish itself as the fall rendezvous for genre cinema on the French Riviera.” They emphasized that this Samain should serve to highlight “an audacious, free, and visually inventive auteur cinema.”
With more than ten films in competition and several premieres, the Samain proved that fantastic cinema can still surprise and unite. At its close, the audience praised the quality of the films screened and the diversity of offerings from around the world.
Nice has therefore successfully reconnected with its nights of chills. The Samain of Fantastic Cinema, between homage and exploration, reminded us that the fantastical remains a realm of free expression, rooted in its time and always open to imagination.
