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A Brand-New Genre Festival Arrives in Shibuya This November, Bookended by a Postpartum Nightmare and a Pitch-Black Comedy
Tokyo’s newest horror event has chosen its opening night selection: Night Feeds, a psychological horror short directed by Rana Roy and led by Moon Knight actress May Calamawy, as first reported by Variety. The inaugural Yami International Film Festival takes place November 20–26 at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya, and it will wrap with Alex Goyette’s horror thriller Breeder.
Produced at the American Film Institute, Night Feeds follows a new mother cut off from the world, whose mounting anxiety starts to merge with fear of a distant war until she can no longer separate waking life from nightmare. Calamawy is also part of the cast of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. Closing film Breeder mixes gallows humor with scares in a story centered on breeding, with Glee Emmy nominee Dot-Marie Jones playing Patti, a woman driven to the edge of sanity.
The festival is the work of Yami Inc., a Japanese company that stages horror exhibitions and other genre attractions, and its mission is to put fresh horror filmmakers from Japan and around the globe in front of local audiences. A submissions window that ran from late May through August pulled in 182 entries from 40 countries and territories, which were narrowed to six features and eight shorts for competition. Zoe Berriatúa’s Spanish feature Buffet Libre and Abner Pastoll’s South Korean-British co-production Nervous will have their Asian premieres, while the other four features debut in Japan. Among the shorts, Rick Kawanaka’s The Pot is the lineup’s lone world premiere, and Katagiri Eriko’s When You Open the Door screens as a special presentation.
Roy and Goyette will both make the trip to Tokyo to serve as jurors, joined by Japanese actress Sukezane Kiki, whose credits include Heroes Reborn, Lost in Space and Westworld. Producer Wada Arihiro, known for Silver Express and Fujiko, is running the festival and its programming, and he said each film in the lineup approaches “fear” in its own way, from physical terror to dark humor.
Festival: Yami International Film Festival (first edition)
Dates: November 20–26, 2026
Venue: Human Trust Cinema Shibuya, Tokyo
Opening Film: Night Feeds (director Rana Roy; starring May Calamawy)
Closing Film: Breeder (director Alex Goyette; starring Dot-Marie Jones)
Jury: Rana Roy, Alex Goyette, Sukezane Kiki
Festival Director: Wada Arihiro
Organizer: Yami Inc.
Source: Reporting and confirmation via Variety.