Sunrise Film Festival | Love Horror film reviews and news

After a year spent carrying its climate-mutated mosquitoes through horror festivals from London to Germany and the US, Blood Buzz is heading back to the landscape where its paranoid nightmare began. Daisy Bata’s award-winning short will screen at the BIFA and Grierson-qualifying Sunrise Film Festival in Lowestoft this week, returning to Suffolk almost exactly a year after making its premiere at FrightFest. The homecoming places Blood Buzz in Sunrise’s East Coast films programme, where it is the only horror title among the shorts. Written and directed by investigative journalist-turned-filmmaker Bata, and produced by Michael Shon, the film stars Beth Taylor, Johnny Vivash and Ed Hartland. Shot in the Suffolk countryside, Blood Buzz follows Lianna, a dehydrated teenager who encounters isolated farmer Greg after becoming lost in oppressive summer heat. She claims that climate change has mutated mosquitoes into vampiric creatures capable of taking control of human brains, but her story becomes considerably less straightforward when her stepbrother Kyle arrives and reveals her history of extreme conspiracy theories and ‘episodes’. The uncertainty over Lianna’s state of mind eventually gives way to considerably messier territory, with body horror and violence entering a story initially built around mistrust and conflicting versions of reality. For Bata, who works as an investigative journalist, the film grew partly from her professional encounters with conspiracy culture. She cites work filming with libertarian gun enthusiasts in New Hampshire as one starting point for her interest in fractured ideas of truth and the contemporary fixation on apocalyptic scenarios. More personal experiences also found their way into Lianna’s growing uncertainty about whether she can trust her own perception. Since premiering at FrightFest in London in 2025, Blood Buzz has travelled extensively. Its screenings have included Dead Northern Horror Film Festival, The Dead of Night Film Festival, Phoenix Rising International Film Festival, Black Sunday Film Festival and Romford Horror Festival in the UK, alongside Germany’s Landshut Short Film Festival and Panic Fest in the US. It has also appeared as part of the Independent Horror Society Indie Film Showcase across London, Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester and Norwich. The short won Best Cinematography at Dead Northern and Best Horror Short at Phoenix Rising, where Bata was also nominated for Best Female Director. It received honourable mentions at Women X Festival and Beeston Film Festival and was the winner of the CineCircle Short Film Fund in 2025. Its Suffolk return comes during the fifth edition of Sunrise, which runs in Lowestoft from 20 to 23 August. Founded by filmmaker Joshua Freemantle in 2021, the festival has grown from a grassroots coastal event into Suffolk’s largest film festival, with more than 1,100 submissions received for the 2026 edition. This year, 68 per cent of its programme is F-rated, recognising films written or directed by women. Horror also extends beyond the East Coast shorts selection. Among the festival's other genre offerings is The Creature from Scroby Sands, a low-budget feature shot in Great Yarmouth, giving this year's programme another distinctly East Anglian monster story. Blood Buzz screens as part of the Sunrise Film Festival in Lowestoft, Suffolk. The BIFA and Grierson-qualifying festival runs from 20 to 23 August 2026, with tickets and the complete programme available through the Sunrise Film Festival website: sunrisefilmfestival.co.uk/

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