Indigenous Horror is finally getting the shine it deserves, and some amazing Horror shorts are turning up all over the festival circuit this year. imagineNATIVE in Toronto ran a dedicated Indigenous Horror program this June called Witching Hour. LA Skins Fest, in its 20th year, has about a dozen horror shorts in its November lineup. Toronto’s Blood in the Snow festival goes further, giving Indigenous, Métis, and Inuit Horror its own program, Bloody Spirits of Winter.
Native horror filmmakers have run with that freedom, and people are noticing. Over the past year, their shorts have screened at Sundance, TIFF, and Rotterdam, won prizes at genre festivals like Brooklyn Horror, and landed on TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten list. Many take the stories they grew up hearing in their communities and turn them into something that keeps audiences up at night.
Here are 13 Indigenous Horror shorts breaking out on the festival circuit right now, and the filmmakers who made them.
1. They Wait
Dir. David J. Aberle (Diné)
A grandfather can’t get justice through the courts, so he hires an Indigenous spirit broker to get revenge for him. He finds out the hard way that you can’t take back what you say in anger. Released May 9, it screened at the Nogales International Film Festival in Arizona
2. The Whistling
Dir. Tamara Stratton (Osage)
When an unlikely crew of Native filmmakers gather to make a film, they become trapped inside the set and, one by one, begin to disappear. Stratton co-wrote the script with four co-writers, including Rhiana Yazzie, who also stars alongside Frank Katasse. Native artists making a horror movie about Native artists making a movie is a good joke, and LA Skins Fest is showing it in November.
3. Klee
Dir. Gavin Baird (Métis)
Few Indigenous shorts have traveled as far as Klee over the past year. Set in 1885 Saskatchewan, it follows an alien who crashes to earth and is sent to seduce and kill a settler family. Baird made it look like a 1970s sexploitation reel, with a 16mm look and practical effects. Don’t watch it with your parents. Underneath the sleaze is a sharp joke about who the real invaders are. It premiered at TIFF in September 2025, made TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten list for the year, went on to Rotterdam and imagineNATIVE, and got a perfect score from Film Threat.
4. Mangittatuarjuk (The Gnawer of Rocks)
Dir. Louise Flaherty (Inuit)
Two young women follow a trail of colored stones and end up trapped in the lair of the Mangittatuarjuk, a creature from Inuit legend with a taste for children. After they see what it has done to its victims, they and their village must use what the Elders taught them to defeat it. The stop-motion film, in Inuktitut, won Best Director at the Great Canadian Horror Film Festival and Best Screenplay at Brooklyn Horror in 2025, then screened at Sundance in January.
5. John’s First Tattoo
Dir. Jett Kowalchuk (Métis)
A guy with a dull life decides a snake tattoo will fix it. On the way to the chair, he passes rooms full of people in huge masks, tries to leave, and can’t. There’s no dialogue; nearly everything is in black and white, and the look owes a lot to Fritz Lang. What starts as a gag about needle nerves gets much darker by the end. It won a Golden Sheaf at the Yorkton Film Festival, and Film Threat gave it a 9 out of 10.
6. Lethal Ethel
Dir. Elayna Einish (Naskapi)
Ethel is a vampire who sits for a documentary crew and, in full goth makeup, explains that she only eats iron miners. The miners came, the caribou left, and Ethel got hungry. The mockumentary has played at imagineNATIVE, RIDM in Montreal, and Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma.
7. Itseetamapi
Dir. Adam Solway (Blackfoot)
A young Blackfoot woman can reach the spirit world without knowing how or why. Something dark has noticed her. imagineNATIVE commissioned the film for its 2026 Originals program, which backs new work from Indigenous filmmakers across Canada. It’s in English and Blackfoot. After its world premiere at imagineNATIVE in June, it screened at the Calgary International Film Festival
8. Shadow in the Desert
Dir. Boise B Esquerra (Colorado River Indian Tribes)
The film starts as a crime story. A young woman high on drugs robs someone on the Navajo reservation and gets away with the goods, plus a black leather pouch she doesn’t think much of. She should have. Something in the pouch starts working on her, and its owner is tracking her down. Shadow in the Desert has screened at the Bend Film Festival, Screamfest, LA Shorts International Film Festival, and will screen at FilmQuest and LA Skins Fest.
9. What the Crows Saw
Dir. Gina East (Isleta Pueblo)
A Pueblo woman’s sister goes missing, and the trail leads to a tavern where the regulars aren’t what they seem. East builds the story around a search that will be painfully familiar to many Native families, then pushes it into folk horror. The screenplay won the Grand Prize at the Creative World Awards.
10. Tȟáčȟa Škaŋ: Deer Movement
Dir. Juliana Brown Eyes (Oglala Lakota)
A dancer goes to an audition and gets treated badly because she’s Native. Back in her New York apartment, she starts hearing ancestral songs, seeing things, and feeling her body change. Brown Eyes won Best Director at the first LA Indigenous Film Festival, the film was an official selection at the 2026 Indie Shorts Awards Cannes, and it screens at LA Skins Fest in November.
11. This Land
Dir. Aiyana Shuler (Cherokee)
Laura Orson, an elderly disabled woman, has a recurring nightmare. A creature keeps showing up in her dreams, and then it starts showing up when she’s awake. While she wrestles with guilt over her late father, the creature keeps getting closer, until she has no choice but to ask for help. This Land will be making its world premiere at LA Skins fest.
12. After Dark
Dir. John Gibbs (Ponca/Meskwaki/Sac and Fox)
A park ranger goes for a late-night run through a secluded park and runs into an old friend. Rumors have been going around about people disappearing out there, and as the night goes on, they start to feel very real. The film won Best Student University at the Great Plains Film Festival, and the Holba’ Pisachi’ Native Film Festival at the Chickasaw Cultural Center picked it for its lineup.
13. Nasty
Dir. Brenna Sawney (Cherokee)
Beauty and lifestyle influencer, Sienna, receives an unexpected visitor while filming her weekly vlog. Sawney made the film during NYU Tisch’s Empowering Indigenous Voices directing intensive in Santa Fe. It premiered at the Santa Fe International Film Festival and will be screening at LA Skins Fest.
Where to see them
Most of these films are still on their first festival run, and none of them are streaming yet. LA Skins Fest shows seven of them November 18–22 in Los Angeles. Beyond that, your best bet is to follow the filmmakers and watch for where they’re screening next, whether at a festival or a local event.
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