Dead Northern Short Cuts – Cegsex, Thresholds and Hunter

Short films don’t need much time to create big ideas. Sometimes all it takes is an unwanted mouth appearing on your arm, an attempt to contact somebody beyond the grave or a desperate search for food at the end of the world.

Our latest Dead Northern Short Cuts heads into three very different corners of the festival’s 2026 shorts programme, speaking to the filmmakers responsible for bringing each of those scenarios to the screen. There’s Welsh-language body horror with a wicked comic streak in Cegsex, supernatural forces waiting to answer the call in Thresholds, and a brutal fight for survival in the post-apocalyptic world of Hunter.

Together, the three films offer another glimpse at the breadth of this year’s short film selection, where horror can emerge from the embarrassment of adolescence, grief for someone lost or simply the need to stay alive for another day.

Alun Rhys Morgan – Cegsex

Trying to circumvent an online age restriction proves considerably more embarrassing than clearing your browser history in Cegsex, which follows Tomos as an attempt to bypass restrictions on adult content results in a mouth erupting from his arm. He must somehow keep his increasingly troublesome new appendage quiet before his mum discovers what’s going on.

Inspired by recent UK age-verification legislation, the Welsh-language short combines digital-age anxieties with body horror and the particularly uncomfortable sexual shame of adolescence.

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

I’m Alun Rhys Morgan, a writer-director from Cardiff, Wales. I’ve been making short films for the past decade, ranging from bonkers horror to silly comedies (and often both at the same time). After screening my last horror short, COLLECTION ONLY, at Dead Northern back in 2024, returning with Cegsex was a complete no-brainer.

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

Making this film was an absolute rollercoaster. It was commissioned by S4C (the Welsh-language TV channel) as a comedy pilot under an insanely tight turnaround: we had just two months to write, shoot, edit and deliver a VFX-heavy film.

The pace killed any chance to overthink. As soon as a draft was down, we were diving straight into revisions following exec notes. We shot over four days in Wales with a brilliant cast and crew, and had our first assembly the following week. As a native Welsh speaker, it was a massive privilege to make a short in Welsh, and to push the language into a genre space it rarely gets to play in.

Upon delivery, the internal S4C legal team gave us plenty of “WTF?!” reactions, which we immediately logged as a massive win. (If it wasn’t hitting the festival circuit right now, it would probably be buried in the ground somewhere.)

In all seriousness, we’re hugely grateful to our supportive commissioner, Guto Rhun, who really fought our corner, and to S4C for commissioning it.

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

Dead Northern is a bangin’ venue with an incredible horror crowd, run by a team that genuinely lives and breathes the genre (plus, they have easily the coolest branding on the festival circuit).

I’m really excited to see how the audience reacts to a Welsh-language horror short, since there aren’t many out there. There are a handful of deeply weird moments in this film, and I can’t wait to hear the crowd react, whether it’s laughs, groans or disgust… It will be fun either way.

Sam Dixon and Sixto Perea Rubio – Thresholds

Grief and the supernatural collide in Thresholds, a short following Laura as she attempts to make contact with her deceased mother.

Opening a line of communication with the dead is rarely a straightforward proposition in horror, however, and Laura soon discovers that her attempt to reach the person she has lost may have connected her with considerably more than she hoped for.

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

We are Sam Dixon and Sixto Perea Rubio, the directing team behind Thresholds, which we are so pleased to say is our second film at Dead Northern!

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

Making Thresholds was an event, to say the least. Coming off our previous short, Five Turns, we knew we wanted to push ourselves further in what we could achieve on a no-budget production, including building a homemade track and dolly.

Whilst Five Turns was everything we wanted it to be, our aim was to make Thresholds’ narrative a touch simpler. The shoot itself was an exercise in cutting back, with two shortened days and our cinematographer Silvia once again working every camera and lighting role. So, the fact that a film exists at all is a pretty great part of it.

Also, just to vent, trying to do sound design on a device that crashed anytime it had more than 12 sound files in the timeline was hell on earth haha!

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

We have a pretty odd opener that I think will play well on the big screen, and seeing how crowds react to our scares is always a good time.

Although mostly, I’m excited for the other shorts on show, as the ones that played alongside Five Turns were so strong and imaginative that I often find myself thinking of them in the years since.

Pavlos Sifakis – Hunter

Food has become a precious commodity and survival is anything but guaranteed in Hunter, a post-apocalyptic short set in a world where scarcity has turned finding the next meal into a potentially deadly undertaking.

A father and his daughter enter a derelict building in search of prey, only for their hunt to pull them into a savage battle for survival.

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

My name is Pavlos Sifakis. I am the writer and director of the post-apocalyptic short film HUNTER.

Although I would have loved to go to Dead Northern and revisit the beautiful city of York, unfortunately that was not feasible due to my work schedule. But I’m thrilled that HUNTER will travel there and I hope the audience will enjoy our film.

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

The film’s final, climactic scene was the first one we shot. It was an exterior scene in the middle of December, we had to cover sixteen shots in eight hours, and we went through at least three different weather conditions. It was certainly memorable!

As the writer-director of the film, I found it equally enjoyable and stressful working with the cast and crew to try and bring our dystopian vision to life with limited means and a modest budget.

I think our lowest of lows was a couple of days before filming began, when we lost one of the main locations. Thankfully, my producer, Adamantia, moved fast and we were able to secure an even better one.

The best part has to be when I saw our cast in full costume and make-up for the first time and realised how seamlessly they fit into the world I had imagined in my head years ago. Couldn’t have wished for a better, more suitable cast.

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

It kills me I’m not gonna be able to be there to watch my film with the festival audience. Horror is one of the few genres that generate clear and audible reactions from the audience, so it’s always fun (even if a bit stressful as well) to hear all the gasps, the screams and even the uncomfortable chuckles.

It’s also very useful to filmmakers because we can see what works well and what doesn’t. That’s the part I’m always looking forward to when seeing my film on the big screen. Fingers crossed, there will be more gasps than chuckles.

From a deeply inappropriate extra mouth to unwanted contact with the other side and the dangers of hunting for food in a broken world, this trio shows just how quickly a short film can establish its own distinctive nightmare.

There’s also something particularly suited to horror about the format. With little room for excess, an unsettling idea can arrive, take hold and deliver its sting before an audience has had much opportunity to prepare for it. Cegsex, Thresholds and Hunter approach that challenge from very different directions, but each will be bringing its own particular brand of trouble to the Dead Northern screen.

We’ll be meeting another trio from the festival’s 2026 short film selection in the next Dead Northern Short Cuts.