By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Last year, the Escape from Tribeca section became the key showcase for horror and related genre fare at New York City’s annual Tribeca Festival. Programmers Matt Barone and Jonathan Penner, the former of whom had previously handled Tribeca’s Midnight slate, oversaw the transition of Escape to the sole, wide-ranging celebration of the best of scary, provocative cinema. They discuss their exciting 2026 slate here.
The Tribeca Festival runs June 3-14 in New York City, and the Escape films include Alex Goyette’s black-comic chiller BREEDER, about genetic science gone wrong; Hugo Ruiz’s brutal one-night crime shocker DANTE; Ben Sottak’s postapocalyptic survival saga HALLOWARRIOR; Alphan Eseli’s story of a bizarre birth and its devastating aftermath, MUTTER: THE DIARY OF A MOTHER; Henry Chaisson’s frightening family drama RECLUSE (pictured above); Sam Scott’s rock ’n’ roll horror-comedy banger TURN IT UP!; two documentaries, Jessica Chandler and producer Eli Roth’s DEATH BOOM, about the funeral industry, and Nathan Stenberg, Mike Attie and Katarina Poljak’s THE HAUNTING OF PENNHURST, about a former asylum turned haunted attraction; and a 30th-anniversary screening of Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s BOUND, with Lilly and the cast in attendance. More details can be found and tickets ordered at the Escape from Tribeca website.
Now that Escape is established as the key genre showcase at Tribeca, what is the mission statement, and has it changed at all this year?
JONATHAN PENNER: The mission is, as ever, to showcase the best available genre films for our Tribeca audience and give the freshest genre artists a place to shine and be embraced.
MATT BARONE: We also aim to celebrate genre cinema’s history in as big and special a way as we can. The latter, this year, is the 30th-anniversary screening and panel discussion of BOUND. Tribeca has so much great programming across so many different verticals, so it’s on Jonathan and I to maintain that level of quality and excitement for New York City’s genre-film lovers and get them excited about the festival, while also offering something enticing to Tribeca attendees who may not like or consider a genre like horror otherwise.
This year, unlike in the past, Escape is all new movies, with the exception of BOUND. Was that an intentional approach or just a matter of what was available?
PENNER: We always want to mix it up. Luckily, Escape can be whatever it needs to be. This year, the anniversary screening we were most excited about was BOUND, and that left room for eight or nine world premieres. We looked at a ton of films, and these eight were the ones we couldn’t deny. This was the best possible version of Escape ’26.
BARONE: The fun thing about programming Escape is that it can be something different slate-wise every year. There will always be a premium on world premieres, of course, but that number can be different each year and complemented by one or more anniversary screenings, parties, panels and/or special screenings. We go into each year with our minds open, and let the films themselves tell us what the lineup should look like. This year, there was a real surplus of strong new movie options, so it was exciting to be able to expand the amount of world premieres to eight—the most we’ve had to date.
What trends did you see in genre cinema this year while making the selection process?
PENNER: Handmade is always going to prevail. The best films, or at least the ones we are attracted to, are those with the clearest visions, the most identifiable voices. So whether they’re comedies with animation and practical effects like TURN IT UP!, or truly unique, difficult slices of life like MUTTER: THE DIARY OF A MOTHER (pictured below), talent and determination are what we look for. Trendy movies don’t tend to come our way or light our fires.
BARONE: This is actually something I noticed last year that carried over into this one: There seems to be an emphasis on fun and being playful with genre tropes. We have some amazing, straightforward, very bleak horror films in the lineup to balance it all out—specifically MUTTER and RECLUSE—but the majority of what we’ve watched over the last two years has put a real focus on letting loose. You can see it in horror on a wider scale too, right? Filmmakers like Zach Cregger and Curry Barker are making noise through films that are scary and shocking but also a hell of a lot of fun. There’s something in the horror air, so to speak, and much of our Escape lineup speaks to that. Films like HALLOWARRIOR, BREEDER, DANTE and TURN IT UP! are very much of that same energy.
Did you seek out a group of films with different tones, subjects and countries of origin?
BARONE: While you have to let the films themselves heavily dictate the lineup, there’s definitely an awareness of trying to balance it out with a variety of vibes, styles and subgenres. You don’t want to have a lineup that’s all soul-crushing, bleak horror, just as you don’t want a lineup that only has horror-comedies. So if you find a couple of great horror-comedies early into the programming process, you do start to look for darker films, and vice versa. And with Escape, we’ve consistently made an effort to find films from all around the world and, more specifically, from countries that may not have a large output of genre films. In years past, that’s been DOG OF GOD from Latvia and SHE LOVED BLOSSOMS MORE from Greece, for example. This year, it’s Turkey with the exceptional and devastating MUTTER: THE DIARY OF A MOTHER. And also DANTE, which comes from Spain—a country that’s very prolific in genre cinema—but balances crime thriller, pitch-black comedy and horror in a way that feels fresh and unique within that world.
PENNER: We want to have as balanced a program as possible, but we never take a film we don’t believe in because it might fill a possible gap. For instance, this year we have no action films. Thrillers, but nothing driven by action like KILL or ENTER THE DRAGON.
Do you each have a particular favorite among the lineup?
BARONE: Two films I want to highlight are a pair of unique discoveries. The first is MUTTER: THE DIARY OF A MOTHER, from Turkish filmmaker Alphan Eseli. It’s a truly singular horror-drama about a woman struggling to take care of an alien-like baby in a Turkish community that has outcasted her. At times, it reminded me of something you’d see from a filmmaker like Andrzej Zulawski [POSSESSION] in its artful strangeness, while it also left me emotionally pulverized by the end. It’s really something special.
On the opposite tonal end, there’s the raucous and very charming Canadian horror-comedy TURN IT UP!, from first-time director Sam Scott. It’s about a struggling indie rock band that discovers a guitar riff that opens a portal to another dimension and also makes people’s heads explode, and it’s a great example of young first-time filmmakers throwing everything they have at the screen stylistically and having a blast tonally. It’s legit hilarious at times, does some things visually I’ve never seen before and features the great Julian Richings playing a character named Dr. Pretorious. It’s a film that knows exactly what it wants to be, and has a blast doing it.
PENNER: I’m proud that we have BOUND’s 30th with the cast and Lilly Wachowski! This amazing, career-launching neo-noir is erotic, twisted and super-cinematic—everything Escape wants to be. I know this is going to be an amazing evening.
You’ve got a couple of documentaries that are not movie-focused; was that something you wanted to put a new emphasis on this year?
PENNER: We go where the films take us. This year, we found these two incredible docs, and we had to have them. We get offered tons of behind-the-scenes and making-of docs, but most of them are either too niche or play like supplemental materials. For us to take a film, it has to feel exciting and fun, and not just be about something that’s exciting and fun. Escape is a feeling, not a thought.
BARONE: I’m thrilled not only that we have two documentaries in the lineup, but that they’re not the more traditional cinema-history-centric kind. I love movie about film history, but as a genre programmer, it’s always tricky to find docs that capture that late-night, Escape-minded vibe but aren’t about Escape-minded classic films. So to have two documentaries that expand what a section like Escape can be is pretty special. DEATH BOOM, of course, has Eli Roth at its center, so that’s a natural horror connection, but its subject matter taps into the fascinations with mortality and what happens after death, here in a very literal real-world sense and not the supernatural, that are foundational for horror fans.
And with THE HAUNTING OF PENNHURST (pictured below), disability representation is front and center, but it’s also a look at haunter culture and the real-life horror that people are capable of and how the aggrieved can reclaim what they’ve lost as a result of that horror. I’m confident in saying that horror fans haven’t seen a doc quite like THE HAUNTING OF PENNHURST.
Having done this for a few years now, what lessons have you learned from past festivals?
PENNER: Matt is much smarter than I am!
BARONE: Since our first Escape in 2023, we’ve tried to “eventize” our screenings and the section in general by making it more than, “Come watch a great new genre film.” We’ve done things like swag giveaways and trivia during intros, created Escape posters and trailers that play before every film screening during Tribeca and put together handmade zines that we give out throughout the festival. And it’s been clear that people appreciate us going those extra miles to offer a fuller experience, and look forward to seeing what we’re going to complement the programming itself with next. Jonathan and I go those extra miles because we’re fans first, and don’t take for granted the fact that we get to put together something as exciting and impactful as Escape From Tribeca, so it’s a real joy to give audiences and Escape supporters as much we can back in return.
Have you seen any changes or consistencies in the Escape audiences?
PENNER: We have a consistent audience, which is wonderful, and every year a few more Tribeca loyalists come over to the psychotronic side and see what the hell the fuss is about.
BARONE: The audience hasn’t changed since we launched Escape so much as it’s grown, which is exciting and rewarding. Before we combined the Midnight and Escape from Tribeca sections into one Escape section last year, Tribeca had always premiered genre films and introduced folks to classics like LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL. But Escape has given us the perfect brand and engine to really mobilize New York City’s genre community and expand its footprint. The speed at which we’re selling out our Escape premieres has increased, and the excitement and visibility both internally and externally around Escape continues to grow. A real watershed moment happened last year when Tina Romero’s QUEENS OF THE DEAD, one of our Escape ’25 world premieres, won Tribeca’s overall, fest-wide Audience Award. That showed that what we’re doing with Escape is connecting, and has the potential to do so even more as we keep growing it.
What do you think makes Escape unique among festival genre showcases?
PENNER: Besides the fact that our audience rubs shoulders with the very groovy downtown Tribeca audience, complete with big stars and red carpets—which is very different than most genre festivals—our fans can always expect something different. We love to mix it up, and we love giveaways—zines, posters, etc. This year we have some incredible swag, including a zine with a color work of art by Lilly Wachowski. We want to create a feeling that you have to be there to enjoy, which is what the festival does in a big way, and Escape tries to do in a smaller way.
BARONE: Whereas festival genre showcases are traditionally all new films and world premieres, Escape has the ability to be a bit unpredictable in what the lineup will look like each year. There will always be several world premieres, but how many exactly can change, just as how many anniversary retro screenings we’ll have can shift. Last year, we had Mary Harron and David Cronenberg on stage for AMERICAN PSYCHO and SHIVERS, respectively, and this year it’s just the one BOUND anniversary. We’ve also hosted parties like our Godzilla dance party in 2024, panels like our “Women in Horror” one in 2023 that featured Kate Siegel and Jennifer Reeder and last year’s double feature of long-lost Andy Milligan flicks restored by Severin Films.
This is also the second year in a row where we’re putting together a special zine for Escape screening attendees along with an Escape poster. I like to think of Escape, at least in its spirit, as a kind of mini genre festival within the larger Tribeca Festival rather than just a traditional genre film section.
