The Unnamed Footage Festival (UFF) team is excited to reveal the first wave of films for its highly anticipated 9th edition, including world premieres, new releases, and returning UFF alums.
Taking place from March 24th through March 29th, 2025, UFF9 will be screening an unrivaled lineup of found footage features and shorts at San Francisco’s historic Balboa Theater. With the theatrical releases of UFF alumni such as DOOBA DOOBA, DREAM EATER, and HUNTING MATTHEW NICHOLS, among others, found footage is experiencing a renaissance. As such, UFF has expanded its line up to include a fourth full day of films on Thursday, March 26th, guaranteeing the most expansive lineup in festival history.
Leading up to the festival, the Unnamed Footage Festival will be co-presenting Terror Tuesday with San Francisco’s Alamo Drafthouse New Mission, on March 24th. On Wednesday, March 25th, UFF will be kicking off the festivities proper, with its annual Recalibration Party taking place at the Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco’s historic Mission district. Open to all festival attendees, the Recalibration Party features a chance to mingle with found footage fans and filmmakers, as well as catch a movie and enjoy copious libations during UFF’s annual Power Hour, featuring a rapid fire barrage of 60 found footage clips in 60 minutes.
Thursday through Sunday we dive into the heart of the festival: four full days of non-stop found footage horror, faux documentary, screenlife, and all forms of in-world-camera. Each day is loaded with fantastic titles, featuring a mix of familiar filmmakers and bold new voices in found footage. UFF Alumni Dillon Brown returns to the fest with his spectacular new feature, PRIMAL DARKNESS, which will be released on exclusive found footage streaming platform FOUNDTV shortly after the screening. Also returning to the festival will be Anthony Cousins with FROGMAN RETURNS, and Adrian Țofei with WE PUT THE WORLD TO SLEEP, his long awaited followup to the depraved and unforgettable BE MY CAT: A FILM FOR ANNE. Films by newcomers include the hospital bodycam thriller INFIRMARY from Nicholas Pineda, Samuel Freeman’s wildly experimental feature DON’T LOOK IN THE DARK, and Baptist Agostini-Croce’s micro budget Folk horror HERITAGE.
The complete schedule and second wave will be announced soon with more premieres, special events, and retro screenings. Badges are on sale now via FilmFreeway.
PRIMAL DARKNESS (2026, dir. Dillon Brown) WORLD PREMIERE
With the Tahoe Joe trilogy complete, Dillon Brown (Tahoe Joe, Ghost, The Summer We Dies) returns to found footage with his most intense film yet. Hoping to kick off the second season of his series with a bang, hunting influencer Cole Harrington travels into the wilderness of Northern Nevada in search of a mountain lion that’s been menacing local livestock, but when he finds a camera belonging to a pair of missing hikers his hunting expedition becomes a fight for survival with something much more dangerous than a simple wildcat.
While his Tahoe Joe films embrace the goofiness of the regional cryptid, PRIMAL DARKNESS is pure horror, using the isolation and emptiness of Northern Nevada—and the area’s numerous abandoned mines—to craft a bleak tale of survival that is not to be missed.
FROGMAN RETURNS (2026, dir. Anthony Cousins)
In the sequel to his hit creature feature, Anthony Cousins (Frogman, Scare Package) delivers another buffet of frights and frogs in this creature-feature sequel. Featuring new and familiar faces alike, FROGMAN RETURNS picks up where Frogman left off. Delving into the lore of the Loveland Frogman, this sequel cranks everything up to eleven, guaranteeing a froggy fantasy filled with more frogmen than you can wave a magic wand at.
Frogs aside, Cousins’ background as a cinematographer shines through in this film FROGMAN RETURNS adopts a far different style than its predecessor, eschewing the tracking lines and static of a Hi8 for crisp, digital look, that lets it show off its amazing practical effects creatures.
Hail Frogman!
WE PUT THE WORLD TO SLEEP (2026, dir. Adrian Țofei)
Adrian and Duru get lost in the characters they play in an apocalyptic film and embark on a secret mission to end the world for real. What follows goes beyond their wildest imagination.
If you haven’t seen Adrian Țofei’s 2015 feature Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, stop reading and watch it right now. If you have seen it, you’ll know that Țofei is a master of the bizarre, and his newest film is no exception. The middle film of a spiritual trilogy that includes Be My Cat and the upcoming Pure, WE PUT THE WORLD TO SLEEP expands his confrontational style into something far more expansive. Shot over nearly a decade across Romania, Türkiye, and Ukraine, the film merges autofiction and layered reality games into a constantly shifting perspective piece. Rather than simply revisiting the confessional intimacy of Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, Țofei widens the frame to challenge what “captured reality” even means.
INFIRMARY (2025, dir. Nicholas Pineda)
When Edward, an ex-marine, takes a job as a security guard at the abandoned Wilshire Hospital, he expects to face long nights and the occasional vagrant, but instead finds himself thrown into a nightmare. Scheduled for demolition, the former mental hospital is a maze of labyrinthine hallways, and Edward’s night is only made worse by a mysterious prowler, a sinister hospital administrator, and a slew of medical dummies that refuse to stay put. As tension mounts, Edward’s new job turns into a terrifying fight for survival with forces he can barely comprehend.
Nicholas Pineda’s directorial debut is a found footage tour de force, sporting a stellar central performance from lead actor Paul Syre (Smoking Tigers, Badly in Love) and an unforgettable locale, INFIRMARY is sure to delight found footage fans looking for a scare.
DON’T LOOK IN THE DARK (2026, dir. Samuel Freeman)
During a camping trip to Pinelands National Reserve, a couple’s cellphones mysteriously refuse to stop recording. What at first appears to be a benign software malfunction, the pair quickly realize that something inexplicable lurks in the woods, and whatever it is, it wants to be seen.
DON’T LOOK IN THE DARK is The Blair Witch Project for a post-Skinamarink audience. Highly experimental and taking advantage of vertical recording, intense shaky cam, and long stretches of darkness broken only by the panicked sounds of the film’s protagonists, Samuel Freeman’s directorial debut derives horror not only from the couple’s circumstances, but from the very way we interact with technology in a world where everyone has a camera.
HERITAGE (2026, dir. Baptist Agostini-Croce) WORLD PREMIERE
Fifteen years after leaving Corsica, Marie and Daniel return to visit their elderly grandfather. Looking to capture their reunion, they pick up the family camcorder, but what they uncover is far from what they expected. With its stylized combination of camcorder and archival footage, HERITAGE is a verisimilitudinous journey into Corsica, as it follows an array of misfits as it explores the isolation, ennui, and unwelcomeness they feel in their own island home.
Steeped in Corsican folklore, HERITAGE cements first-time filmmaker Baptist Agostini-Croce as a powerful new voice in found footage. Between its grounded, nigh-improvisational performances from local Corsican actors and footage captured on an actual consumer camcorder, HERITAGE evokes the found footage yore, and channels the raw immediacy that first captivated found footage horror audiences.
