After last month’s celebration of comedy, we’re shifting from funny to fearsome film with Genre in Focus: Horror – a series of events taking place throughout June that will showcase the North’s homegrown horror talent and the UK filmmakers putting the frighteners on the genre scene at a national and international level.

We’re setting the scene with Developing Horror on Tuesday, 16 June, where we'll hear from two of the UK’s most exciting horror filmmakers. Prano Bailey-Bond is a writer-director and Screen International Star of Tomorrow; her horror short Nasty was an award-winning festival smash and her debut feature, Censor is currently in post-production. Oliver Kassman is a producer and founder of Escape Plan, a genre focussed production company whose first film was the internationally celebrated, much-hyped UK horror Saint Maud. Our host is Anna Bogutskaya; freelance film programmer and co-founder of horror film collective The Final Girls.

On Monday, 22 June we open up a box of local tricks with a special edition of our Northern Exposure Short Film Night. We’ll showcase great horror shorts from Northern fearmongers and follow up with a live Q&A session with the filmmakers themselves. The killer line-up includes Secretion: a grimly atmospheric chiller from Sarah Talbot about an unhappily married couple whose domestic unease is amplified by stilted dinners under a gruesome, dripping stain on the ceiling of their flat.

Both events are free to attend – all you need to take part is a reliable internet connection. For more details on these sessions, and other upcoming talent development opportunities via BFI NETWORK, take a look at our calendar of filmmaker events.