The Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF) is back with a vengeance as it returns to Harvard Square’s arthouse hub, The Brattle Theatre, with five days of mind-bending cinema from March 22nd through the 26th. This year’s festival lineup promises to deliver on all fronts, featuring an eclectic mix of the most daring and genre-defying indie films on the market.

World Premiere of Jeffrey A. Brown’s The Unheard

On opening night, BUFF is proud to present the World Premiere of Jeffrey A. Brown’s Massachusetts-based horror-thriller, The Unheard. Starring Lachlan Watson (Chucky, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), this chilling tale follows a deaf young woman ensconced in a signal-to-noise mystery of dueling senses, realities, truths, identities, and possibly worlds. Jeffrey A. Brown and local screenwriting legends Michael and Shawn Rassmussen will be in attendance for a post-screening conversation.

East Coast Premiere of Eddie Alcazar’s Divinity

Fresh off its world premiere at Sundance, BUFF is excited to bring Eddie Alcazar’s retro-sci-fi masterpiece Divinity to the East Coast for its first showing. Starring Stephen Dorff, Scott Bakula, and Bella Thorne, Divinity is a dystopian vision of beauty and grotesquery that is 100% uncompromising underground cinema.

East Coast Premiere of Bomani J. Story’s The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster

Writer/director Bomani J. Story’s feature debut, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, is set to debut at BUFF following its recent showing at SXSW. The film follows teen science genius Vicaria (The Equalizer’s Laya DeLeon Hayes) as she embarks on a quest to find the cure for death. Breathing new life into Frankenstein’s monster, Story’s electric feature debut challenges conceptions of mortality and monstrosity through a Black lens.

Folk Horror from Around the World

BUFF is proud to present a double-dose of international folk horror, starting with the East Coast Premiere of Tereza Nvotová’s nightmarish Nightsiren. Then, the festival will screen the New England Premiere of the cinematic stunner Enys Men, a film that follows the sole inhabitant of a craggy Cornish island’s descent into madness.

BOSTON UNDERGROUND 2023 FEATURES LINEUP

THE UNHEARD – World Premiere / Opening Night Film
Jeffrey A. Brown | USA | 2023

NIGHTSIREN – East Coast Premiere
Tereza Nvotová | Slovakia, Czech Republic | 2022

A young woman returns to her native mountain village searching for answers about her troubled childhood, but as she tries to uncover the truth, ancient superstitions lead the villagers to accuse her of witchcraft and murder.

SPAGHETTI JUNCTION – East Coast Premiere
Kirby McClure | USA | 2022

August, a recently disabled Southern teen, sees a flash in the sky and begins having strange dreams that beckon her to a cave in the woods. There she encounters a mysterious injured young man called “The Traveler” who needs her help.

ENYS MEN – New England Premiere
Mark Jenkin | UK | 2022

Set in 1973 on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast, a wildlife volunteer’s daily observations of a rare flower turn into a metaphysical journey that forces her as well as the viewer to question what is real and what is nightmare.

DIVINITY – East Coast Premiere
Eddie Alcazar | USA | 2023

In another time, in another place, scientist Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula) dedicated his career to searching for the answer to eternal life, over time creating a substance known as “Divinity.” Now Jaxxon Pierce (Stephen Dorff) controls and manufactures his father’s once-benevolent serum… Society on this barren planet has been entirely perverted by the supremacy of the drug, whose true origins are shrouded in mystery. When two mysterious brothers arrive with a plan to abduct the mogul, and with the help of a seductress named Nikita, they will be set on a path hurtling toward true immortality. Featuring Bella Thorne and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh, Divinity defies description and demands your attention.

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE – New England Premiere
Daniel Goldhaber | USA | 2022

A crew of environmental activists plot a daring plan to disrupt an oil pipeline.

MISTER ORGAN – New England Premiere
David Farrier | New Zealand | 2022

Journalist David Farrier is drawn into a game of cat and mouse with a mysterious individual. Delving deeper he unearths a trail of court cases, royal bloodlines and ruined lives, in this true story of psychological warfare.

MOON GARDEN – Massachusetts Premiere
Ryan Stevens Harris | USA | 2022

A comatose five-year-old girl journeys through an industrial wonderland to find her way back to consciousness.

PIAFFE – New England Premiere
Ann Oren | Germany | 2022

When her sibling Zara suffers a nervous breakdown, introverted Eva is forced to take on Zara’s job as a foley artist. Suddenly, a horsetail starts growing out of her body.

SICK OF MYSELF – New England Premiere
Kristoffer Borgli | Norway, Sweden | 2022

Increasingly overshadowed by her boyfriend’s recent rise to fame as a contemporary artist creating sculptures from stolen furniture, Signe hatches a vicious plan to reclaim her rightfully deserved attention within the milieu of Oslo’s cultural elite.

SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING – Massachusetts Premiere
Quentin Dupieux | France | 2022

A group of vigilantes called the “tobacco-forces” is falling apart. To rebuild team spirit, their leader suggests that they meet for a week-long retreat, before returning to save the world.

THE ANGRY BLACK GIRL AND HER MONSTER – East Coast Premiere
Bomani J. Story | USA | 2023

Brilliant teen scientist Vicaria (The Equalizer’s Laya DeLeon Hayes) theorizes that death is a curable disease and embarks on a dangerous journey to bring back her recently murdered brother.

STAND BY FOR FAILURE: A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT NEGATIVLAND – New England Premiere
Ryan Worsley | USA | 2022

Documentarian RyanWorsley explores cut-and-paste sonic social critics / sound collagists / pranksters Negativland, who have held a mirror up to media and culture and defied copyright laws from the fringes for the last 40+ years.

REBEL – New England Premiere / Closing Night Film
Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah | Belgium, Luxembourg, France | 2022

When Kamal resolves to change his life for the better, he leaves Belgium to help war victims in Syria. But, having arrived, he is forced to join a militia and is left stranded in Raqqa. Back home, his younger brother Nassim quickly becomes easy prey for radical recruiters, who promise to reunite him with Kamal. Their mother, Leila, fights to protect the only thing she has left: her youngest son. Filmmakers Adil & Bilall (Bad Boys For Life, and the recent, infamously shelved Batgirl) deliver an immensely powerful and nuanced portrayal of a family torn apart over a little Muslim boy’s future that epitomizes a transformative cinematic experience.

A limited number of festival badges are available for purchase on the Brattle Theatre’s site.
Tickets will be on sale at www.brattlefilm.org and www.bostonunderground.org

Badgeholders will be able to make screening selections starting Friday March 10th, before tickets are released to the General Public on Monday March 13.