HorrOrigins is in its sixth year as a festival, and 2024 marks its fourth year based in Tucson, Arizona. While many festivals claim to be an event by independent filmmakers for independent filmmakers, HorrOrigins walks the walk. Filmmaker and horror lover Brandon Waites is ready to proudly take over Tucson with a heaping load of short films, feature films, exciting events, networking opportunities, and a bucket full of good times.
HorrOrigins will take place at Galaxy Theaters in Tucson for six days starting Wednesday, September 25th. In addition to Galaxy theater, the festival will make pit stops at some local haunts along the way.
September 25th will kick off the festival with a free networking event at Slow Body Beer. The next day will be their second networking event, allowing movie lovers, screenwriters and filmmakers to mingle. This event will take place on September 26th, with lunch at Serial Grillers and a networking event at Arnette Watering Hole. The festival will close out on September 30th with a Film Tucson event, free of charge.
On top of some exciting networking opportunities, some great filmmakers will be in attendance doing Q&As. September 27th will feature filmmaker Brian Hanson. Hanson will be attending the festival with his film The Bunker (Tony Todd, Tobin Bell). September 28th will feature filmmaker Carter Smith who is there with his film Blumhouse’s The Passenger (Kyle Gallner, Jonathan Berchtold).
Feature directors won’t be the only fascinating attendees. HorrOrigins is one of the few festivals that does an excellent job promoting short films. While everyone is allowed to submit short films for consideration, festival director Brandon Waites does an excellent job promoting filmmakers local to Arizona. His goal is to bring light to the incentives Arizona offers for filmmakers. “With the new incentive programs that Arizona is offering, it’s an opportunity for economic growth in Tucson with the film industry,” Waites says, “[T]here’s a tremendous amount of talent out there in the independent film community, and we want to get as much of it in front of an audience as we can.”
It’s not too late to grab your tickets to this wonderful event, and it’s still not too late to hop on a plane and head down to Arizona for a few days! If you want to grab [the incredibly affordable] tickets and get a kickstart on your spooky season, you can pick them up here. And each ticket description has a more in-depth look into which films are playing during which block!
