Dead Northern Short Cuts – Night Feeds, Cyclops and Pleased to Kill You

Horror can put a monster almost anywhere. It can lurk somewhere between exhaustion and reality, step straight from the pages of a children’s story or simply knock politely on the front door. Our latest Dead Northern Short Cuts finds all three possibilities waiting.

In Night Feeds, the psychological turmoil of early motherhood collides with images of war arriving relentlessly through a screen. Cyclops takes a children’s author back to her old primary school, where the creature in her latest story proves more tangible than expected, while Pleased to Kill You arranges an encounter between two people with one particularly disturbing interest in common.

Ahead of their Dead Northern 2026 screenings, we spoke to Rana Roy, Tariq Sayed and Adolfo Vico about the films they’re bringing to York.

Rana Roy – Night Feeds

The boundaries between internal and external horror begin to collapse in Night Feeds, a psychological horror following an Arab-American mother struggling through the disorientating experience of postpartum while a night nurse unnerves her and images of war flood her screens.

As exhaustion, intrusive thoughts and paranoia intensify, the violence beyond her walls begins bleeding into her private reality. The result blurs nightmare and waking life, asking whether the madness belongs to the woman at its centre or to the world surrounding her.

Who are you and why are you heading to Dead Northern 2026?

I’m Rana Roy, the writer and director of Night Feeds. I’m an Egyptian, Nubian-Sudanese and Indian filmmaker, born in London and raised in Dubai. I started my career as a dancer and actor, and Night Feeds is my thesis film from the AFI Conservatory, where I recently completed my MFA in Directing.

I made Night Feeds from inside my own experience of postpartum. I was having intrusive thoughts of awful things happening to my baby, something 91% of mothers experience, while watching mothers in Gaza live through my worst nightmares.

The film became my way of asking what happens when the world outside becomes as terrifying as the one inside your head. When the world loses its mind, can you listen to yours?

Tell us about what it was like to be part of this production.

The first draft of Night Feeds poured out of me in a day. Then came almost 100 drafts trying to find the film underneath it.

I knew I couldn’t intellectualise an experience that had happened so completely through my body. I needed to find a way for the audience to experience postpartum with her, the exhaustion, repetition, loss of time, intrusive thoughts, and the strange place where intuition and paranoia begin to look like the same thing.

That became the language of the film. I wasn’t interested in explaining what was happening to her. I wanted us to live inside it.

And making something that came from such an isolating experience became incredibly communal. May Calamawy trusted me with a very exposed performance, and I made the film with a predominantly women of colour and non-binary crew. There was something really profound about all of us putting our bodies and instincts into making something about a woman being told not to trust hers.

What part of seeing your film at Dead Northern are you looking forward to most?

Watching it with a horror audience.

I’ve realised through showing Night Feeds that the film changes depending on who is watching it. Mothers recognise things other people sometimes don’t. Some people trust her immediately. Others question her. And that interests me because the film is asking us to sit inside that uncertainty rather than resolve it for us.

But underneath all of that is something much simpler for me. I made this film at a time when the distance between another mother’s suffering and my own had collapsed. If, for fifteen minutes, the film can make that distance disappear for someone else too, then it has done what I hoped it could do.

Tariq Sayed – Cyclops

Every children’s author wants young readers to believe in their creations. Freya might have been rather more successful than she intended.

Practical creature effects take centre stage in Cyclops, a character-driven monster movie following the children’s author as she returns to her former primary school to promote her latest book. As she begins reading to her young fans, it becomes increasingly apparent that the monster within its pages has a much darker reality behind it.

Who are you and why are you heading to Dead Northern 2026?

I’m Tariq, a genre filmmaker and the writer, director and one of the producers of Cyclops. As well as coming up to premiere the film at Dead Northern, I’ll be there to check out this year’s incredible line-up and support other filmmakers. It’s always a blast to spend time within the genre community!

Tell us about what it was like to be part of this production.

It was a very intense shoot, as is so often the case with indie films. We didn’t have much time, we didn’t have much money, but we did have an extremely committed and passionate crew.

We felt like we were put through the wars with long filming days in the Yorkshire winter, but that was all part of the adventure and spirit of it. We banded together and did what we set out to do, and that’s always an amazing feeling.

There’s always a moment when you have to pinch yourself. After working on a script for so long, bringing together the team, finding the perfect location, bringing the right actors on board, and then finally standing on set seeing everything come together, seeing the characters being brought to life, it’s humbling. There’s nothing quite like it.

I’d been working on the character for a long time, and to finally see her being brought to life by Elle was a special experience. She owned it.

The biggest challenge was filming with a 9ft puppet monster! It was a challenge to get it to move the way it needed to. It was incredibly heavy and cumbersome, but I think that actually lends itself to the film. I wanted it to feel bizarre and uncanny and I just had to trust my gut that we were bagging some usable footage!

Luckily we had Graham Taylor, who designed and puppeteers it. He spent the whole time with his head inside it, breaking his back and sweating profusely, while his team managed the arms. It was surreal.

I had nightmares before filming with it, and nightmares afterwards as a result of looking at it all day. I’m hoping it gives the audience some nightmares too!

What part of seeing your film at Dead Northern are you looking forward to most?

I was lucky enough to attend Dead Northern with a previous film, Isaac, and I’m delighted to be returning. It’s such a unique, intimate and welcoming festival.

I’m both terrified and excited to see people’s reaction to the monster. I hope the film will give the audience an entertaining and memorable experience.

Without spoiling anything, there’s a pretty badass moment when Freya, Elle’s character, must face up to the monster. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing that on the big screen.

Adolfo Vico – Pleased to Kill You

Knocking on a stranger’s door can be risky. It’s considerably more so when both people involved happen to be serial killers.

Psychological horror Pleased to Kill You brings a charming but ruthless murderer face-to-face with someone who not only understands his darkest impulses, but might have something even more dangerous to offer. What follows is a slow-burning meeting of murderous minds in which finding common ground may not necessarily be a good thing.

Who are you and why are you heading to Dead Northern 2026?

I’m Adolfo Vico, co-writer/director, producer and general wearer-of-too-many-hats for the psychological horror short Pleased to Kill You.

I’ve spent the last few years focusing on horrors because, frankly, it just feels like the right place for me. It’s the one genre where you can excite and entertain an audience, while subtly slipping in meaningful, uncomfortable questions when their guard is down.

Plus, let’s be honest… it’s just the best genre, isn’t it?

Tell us about what it was like to be part of this production.

Chaotic, hilarious and deeply rewarding. This whole thing started as a simple writing exercise, somehow spiralled into winning the IHS Creators Fund, and suddenly my co-writer Shaun and I were actually making it.

Between hunting down locations, learning the highly specialised art of faking newspaper headlines, directing an amazing cast, and surviving a post-production that felt endless, it’s been a whirlwind.

We’re getting close to the end of our festival run now, next stops LA and London, and looking back, I still can’t believe we pulled all of this off in under a year.

What part of seeing your film at Dead Northern are you looking forward to most?

Dead Northern was genuinely on my wish list. The audience here is awesome. They care.

Also, York is fantastic, and getting to screen the film in a Picturehouse sure feels good.

Mostly, I’m excited to sink a few drinks with fellow filmmakers and chat with the crowd after the lights come up. If you see me, come say hi.

The monsters occupying these three films couldn’t be more different. One exists somewhere in the uncertain territory between mind and reality, another is an enormous physical creation ready to step into the spotlight, while Pleased to Kill You reminds us that sometimes the most dangerous thing waiting in a horror film is simply another person.

Yet Night Feeds, Cyclops and Pleased to Kill You each play with uncertainty in their own way, whether that’s questioning a character’s perception, wondering what might emerge from a seemingly innocent story or discovering exactly what happens when two dangerous strangers recognise something familiar in each other.

They’re three more reasons to expect the unexpected when the lights go down on Dead Northern’s 2026 shorts programme.

More filmmakers will be joining us for another Dead Northern Short Cuts soon.