Out in the Dark brings together five spooky short films that move between the supernatural and the intimate, humour, melancholy, desire, fear, love, and the uncanny. 👻
What happens when the night falls, and our familiar world begins to shift?
Across these five films, vampires and other nocturnal figures share the darkness with riders, lovers, artists, outsiders and dreamers. They inhabit the margins of the everyday, caught between what they are expected to be and what they might become.
📅 Saturday 21st November
🕐 7:30pm
📍 South Leith Parish Church Hall, 6 Henderson St, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 6BS
Out in the dark, the rules of the day begin to loosen. The night is a space for those who wander, those who cannot sleep, those who are looking for something, and those who are trying to escape. It is where strangers cross paths, where forbidden desires can emerge, and where the familiar can suddenly become strange.
These films explore the night not simply as a place of danger, but as a space of possibility — a space that brings us together, where encounters become possible and something unexpected can emerge.
Because perhaps there is a particular power to the night: when the world around us grows darker, we may become more open to one another. We find others who are wandering too, others who cannot sleep, others who are searching, dreaming, escaping.
And sometimes, out in the dark, is exactly where we find each other. Because when the sun goes down, perhaps we do not become someone else. Perhaps we simply become more visible to ourselves — and to each other. Out in the dark, we are all looking for something.
SHORT FILMS
En la noche caminamos solos (At night we walk alone) — Rafa Alberola, Spain, 20 min (2024)
A delivery rider without a bicycle and a vampire girl meet in the night and flee the city together, leaving their jobs behind in search of freedom. But as they move further into the darkness, the rider realises that escape will not be possible until he confronts the mysterious presence that seems to be controlling his every move.
Ella se queda (She stays) — Marinthia Gutiérrez Velazco, Mexico, 10 min (2024)
Throughout a night out in downtown Tijuana, Laura waits for her destiny to arrive. As she moves through the city, she becomes increasingly aware of a group of girls watching her. After an encounter with her former lover, Laura is drawn into a mysterious coven of vampire dancers, where the night offers her the possibility of transformation and belonging.
DARIA’S NIGHT FLOWERS — Maryam Tafakory, Iran / United Kingdom / France, 16 min (2025)
Daria has written her first manuscript about falling in love with a mysterious girl called Abi, whose name means “blue.” In the night flowers of her garden, memories of their love conceal the secrets of a country where love stories can become scenes of violence and repression. Drawing on the archive of Iranian cinema, the film creates a poetic and fragmented space where desire, memory and resistance can emerge from what has been silenced.
LA HORA DE IRSE — Renzo Cozza, Argentina, 20 min (2026)
Patricio feels trapped in a life devoted to caring for his sisters and working within the family business. When a chance for change arrives in the form of a date with an enigmatic stranger, he takes it. As the night unfolds, the possibility of love, freedom and another life begins to emerge, offering Patricio a way out of the existence he has known for centuries.
LOS MURCIÉLAGOS HAN ABANDONADO EL CAMPANARIO (The Bats Have Left the Belltower)— Alfonso Bernal, Manuel Bernal, Spain, 15 min (2025)
In a dark and solitary house hidden in the forest, an ageing filmmaker and vampire lives in a commune with his five disciples. On the night of his birthday, he announces his final wish: to film a shot he has never been able to capture — the sunrise. As his disciples confront their own desire for immortality, the night becomes a strange meditation on cinema, creation, death and the longing to experience the impossible.