Since 2009, audiences have been flocking to Showroom Cinema every October to experience the gruesome delights of Celluloid Screams, Sheffield’s annual horror film festival, with its mix of premieres of the hottest new fright flicks, classic horror screenings, special events and parties. Alongside the main event itself, Celluloid Screams’ all-nighters, day-time horror marathons and one-off screenings have become a staple part of the Showroom’s programme, luring horror fans out of their crypts throughout the year. This April, the team behind Celluloid Screams take their mission to showcase the best in genre cinema a step further with a brand-new film festival which aims to shine a light on the broad spectrum of “fantastic film” – an umbrella term that is often used to describe a range of genres including sci-fi, fantasy, horror, action, martial arts and cult film.

Culture Shock: Festival of Fantastic Film promises to be a thrilling weekend of weird, wild, world cinema, with everything from giant Japanese monsters and Hong Kong action and martial arts epics through to East German soviet-era science fiction and horror-tinged true crime.

The 2025 festival kicks off with the European premiere of Keizo Murase’s Brush of the God, a thrilling spectacle of Japanese kaiju cinema, in which a pair of young teens are transported to a mysterious island populated by strange monsters and must prevent Orochi, a mythological eight-headed dragon, from destroying the world. The festival continues with a rare big screen outing for the classic Terror of Mechagodzilla, to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.

Bold and uncompromising science fiction also takes centre-stage, with Estonian absurdist sci-fi comedy The Black Hole, Ukrainian epic U Are the Universe and In The Dust of The Stars, an East German psychedelic space adventure from 1976, presented by Masters of Cinema. Elsewhere in the programme, action fans can look forward to screenings of notorious Hong Kong action film Fatal Termination and frenetic Taiwanese old-school martial arts opus Seven To One starring Polly Shang Kwan. Horror and true-crime fans are also catered for with documentary The Last Sacrifice, which uncovers the story of the real-life witchcraft killing that inspired The Wicker Man and the first UK screening of the new 4K restoration of Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters.

Culture Shock: Festival of Fantastic Film will take place at the Showroom Cinema from 25-27 April 2025.

For more information visit www.celluloidscreams.com/cultureshock or to buy tickets visit /cultureshock