Want to attend multiple screenings at Defy? The Weekend and Day Passes are the biggest bang for your buck!
A limited number of individual tickets will be available online for each screening the week of the festival.
Friday, August 21, 2026
6:30 PM - 7:45* PM
*TICKETS AVAILABLE AUGUST 14TH*
An edge-of-your-seat collection of short films that will keep you guessing until the final frame. This program delivers tension, dread, and dark thrills. From creeping unease to full-blown terror. Buckle up.
*Run time includes 15+ minute filmmaker Q&A after screening
Friday, August 21, 2026
6:30 PM - 7:45* PM
*TICKETS AVAILABLE AUGUST 14TH*
An edge-of-your-seat collection of short films that will keep you guessing until the final frame. This program delivers tension, dread, and dark thrills. From creeping unease to full-blown terror. Buckle up.
*Run time includes 15+ minute filmmaker Q&A after screening
Want to attend multiple screenings at Defy? The Weekend and Day Passes are the biggest bang for your buck!
A limited number of individual tickets will be available online for each screening the week of the festival.
Director: Gustine Füdickar, Justin Streichman
Country of Origin: United States
Synopsis: As dream life bleeds into waking reality, a woman haunted by her Puritan ancestor must confront the terror buried deep within her bloodline.
Through ritual and violent trial of the body, she fractures the veil between worlds and is thrown into a fight for her life.
Lady Puritan is a surreal psychological meditation on ancestral trauma and the intimate horror of what we are born carrying. Set against the shadow of American Puritanism, the film explores the tension between repression and embodied desire.
Director: Danny Dolan
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: After losing out on the job of a lifetime, a jaded choreographer's escape to the desert is hijacked by an unhinged and malicious rival.
Director: Joseph Taglieri
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: World
Synopsis: What happens when social norms decay? When the machinery of power turns neighbors into enemies? YARA is a young woman who believes in equality for all. When a fascist LEADER is informed of her godlike powers, he seeks to make her a weapon of the state. He poisons her MOTHER in a bid to force the child to access her powers. When Yara attempts to resurrect her mother, she actually summons a life force using her mother’s corpse to warn her she must fight for justice.