Festival Film Horor 2026: Indonesia’s Dedicated Horror Festival Returns

Indonesia’s second annual Festival Film Horor (FFH), takes place in Pacitan, East Java in September 2026 (with the main awards running from 9–12 September), and a lot of effort seems to have gone into building an actual regional community around the genre.

Backed by the Indonesian Ministry of Creative Economy after its 2025 debut pulled in 285 film submissions, FFH deliberately stages events around coastal Pacitan – including spots like Pancer Door – rather than keeping everything locked inside Jakarta multiplexes. This year’s theme is “INDIGO: Melihat yang Tak Terlihat. Membaca yang Terlupakan. Membangun yang Akan Datang” (roughly: seeing the unseen, reading the forgotten, building what comes next), playing on the Indonesian concept of indigo – people believed to be sensitive to supernatural phenomena—to explore the tension between traditional spirit beliefs and modern psychology or science.

Alongside the screenings, workshops, cultural performances, Pasar Hantu (Ghost Market), and Plesir Kidul events, the festival ran three competition tracks: a national category, an East Java high-school student section, and a local Pacitan community showcase.

There are also three competition sections: a national competition open to Indonesian filmmakers, a student competition for high-school students across East Java, and a local Pacitan exhibition category involving community organisations, local groups and younger filmmakers.

I do particularly like having the student and local tracks in there – horror is one of the few genres where someone with a tiny budget, a weird idea, and a few mates can actually make something memorable, so giving grassroots filmmakers a proper stage beats pretending Indonesian horror belongs exclusively to the big Jakarta studios.

The fact that the festival has already gone from 285 submissions in its first year to an expanded second edition with government backing suggests they might actually be onto something here – and considering how dominant horror has become in Indonesian cinemas, having a dedicated event that looks beyond box-office numbers and actually talks about folklore, local identity, film making and the cultural reasons people are scared of certain things makes a lot of sense.

More Asian horror movie news.

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About The Author

I am a fan of movies in general and watch quite a few every week, but my love for Asian horror started in the 90’s during the J-horror boom – you know the ones – and ever since then I’ve been hooked on discovering horror from across Asia, from the classics everyone knows to the hidden gems that deserve a much bigger audience.

On this site I explore Asian horror movies from across Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, Malaysia, and beyond, since the big entertainment sites tend to focus only on the biggest releases.