Founded in 2003, Ravenna Nightmare Film Fest is one of the main festivals dedicated to genre cinema in Italy that every year receives hundreds of film submissions from every corner of the world welcoming at the festival many established authors and the most interesting emerging directors.
Every year, the permanent team can count on the precious contribution from prestigious curators such as Marco Del Bene, associated professor at Bologna University; Carlo Tagliazucca, programmer and artistic consultant for Future Film Festival until 2017, Nevio Galeati, journalist and founder of the Literary Festival GialloLuna NeroNotte and Mariangela Sansone, critic, essayist, member of SNCCI (National Union of Italian Cinema Critics) that also became co-artistic director of the festival in 2021. The ever increasing numbers of audience, press and industry accreditations, made the festival one of the most awaited events of the year in our region.
Cornerstone of Ravenna Nightmare are the two main International competitions for feature and short films, flanked by out of competition screenings, retrospectives, and showcases for the most experimental and underground authors, leaving also space for the films born in our territory. Starting from our 22nd edition, we are also very proud to have the Méliès d’Argent competition for best European Fantastic short film.

The main core of the festival are the two main competitions for short and feature films, but alongside of that we host many other programs: “Ottobre Giapponese”, dedicated to one of the most active countries in genre cinema, Japan. The appointments dedicated to Ottobre Giapponese count on both retrospectives and contemporary movies; “Contemporanea”, a showcase of the most interesting mainstream genre films, “Nightmare Classic”, with screenings of titles that made the history of genre cinema; “Emilia Romagna showcase”, a space dedicated to the films made in our Region. Every year we also assign the Medal of Honor to celebrate the career of an author that made a clear contribution to the genre cinema. Among the prize winners: Liliana Cavani, Roberto De Feo, Alex Infascelli.

Dedicated to the dark side of cinema such as noir, crime, thriller, ghost, mystery and horror, the festival also includes a space for literature thanks to the partnership with the festival GialloLuna NeroNotte. Our festivals share a similar spirit, and together we invited and we’ll keep inviting the most interesting Italian and International authors, from literature and cinema. In the past, we brought to Ravenna authors such as David Lynch, Dario Argento, Pupi Avati, Brian Yuzna, Alex Infascelli, Claudio Cupellini, Francois-Jacques Ossang, Jean-Jacques Annaud,Lamberto Bava, Manetti Bros, Liliana Cavani, Roberto De Feo, Marco Bellocchio.

The festival is both on site and online thanks to the partnership with MyMovies where we curate a all year long section called “Nightmare Legacy” where we can not only stream the films in competition for the duration of the festival, but also program the films that were selected in the previous editions after their festivals career end.

The festival is part of the Méliès Federation and AFIC (association of the Italian cinema Festivals).