Fantastic Fest 2026 Winners: Bloody Tennis Takes Horror Prize
Fantastic Fest has announced its 2026 award winners, with Bloody Tennis director Nikias Chryssos taking Best Director in the Horror competition.
Fantastic Fest has announced its 2026 award winners, and one of the festival’s biggest horror prizes went to a filmmaker we just sat down with: Nikias Chryssos won Best Director in the Horror competition for Bloody Tennis.
The announcement came Tuesday, September 22, with awards spanning the festival’s Main Competition, Next Wave, Horror and shorts programs. Ghost in the Cell, directed by Joko Anwar, took Best Picture in the Horror competition, while Jordan Downey’s The Cycle received a Special Mention.
For us, the Bloody Tennis win lands at a particularly good time. We recently reviewed Chryssos’ bizarre and increasingly brutal tennis horror film and spoke with Chryssos about its body horror, sound design and the strange world surrounding its elite tennis academy. That interview is coming soon to The Fear Review.
Fantastic Fest 2026 Horror Winners
Best Director: Nikias Chryssos for Bloody Tennis
Best Picture: Ghost in the Cell, directed by Joko Anwar
Special Mention: The Cycle, directed by Jordan Downey
The Cycle was already on our radar before Fantastic Fest after Stephen King praised the film ahead of its Shudder release. Its Fantastic Fest recognition gives the film another reason to watch as it heads toward streaming.
Main Competition and Next Wave Winners
In the Main Competition, Girl in the Night, directed by Luka Marčetić, won Best Picture. Bertrand Mandico was named Best Director for Roma Elastica, while Javier Ruiz Caldera’s Five More Minutes received a Special Mention. Five More Minutes also won this year’s Audience Award.
The Next Wave jury selected Alex Schulman’s Adult Supervision as Best Picture and Agata Trzebuchowska as Best Director for Sick. Jollyface, directed by Justin Floyd, received a Special Mention, with performance mentions going to Konrad Karol and Katarzyna Lubik for Sick and Cole Asher Phillips for Phreaker.
Fantastic Fest 2026 Short Film Winners
The festival also announced winners across its four short-film competitions. Jimmy’s Custom Coffin, directed by James P. Gannon, won Best Picture in Fantastic Shorts, with Richard Perez named Best Actor for Richard Goes on a Date. Bagman, directed by Connor Gaston and Vaughn Gaston, won Short Fuse; Connor Wiles’ Sinkpisser won Shorts With Legs; and Yu Yu’s Pre-Parenting won Best Picture in Drawn and Quartered. Joe Garber’s The Magician was named Best WTF Short.
Father Figure Wins Fantastic Pitches
Fantastic Fest also revealed the results of the second Fantastic Pitches competition, presented by Chroma. Father Figure, from writer-director Connor Martin and producer Josh Farnworth, took first place. The 1970s-set wedding folk horror project receives a $100,000 financing award from Chroma, a distribution deal and a premiere at Fantastic Fest 2027.
A second-place prize went to American Vermin from writer-director A.K. Espada, producer Annie Jacob and director of photography Alexandra Bock. The team received a Blackmagic Cinema package from Fangoria along with a year-long mentorship with Fantastic Pitches jurors Gore Verbinski, Catherine Hardwicke and Nic Curcio.
What We Think
The Horror results are the ones that immediately jumped out at us. We just finished our review of Bloody Tennis, including conversations with Chryssos and star Sandra Guldberg Kampp, so seeing Chryssos take Best Director is exciting because he was so fun to talk to about the film and horror overall.
It’s also a strong showing for a few movies we’ve been following throughout Fantastic Fest. Ghost in the Cell taking Best Picture and The Cycle receiving a Special Mention give us a pretty interesting snapshot of what connected with this year’s Horror jury and several of these films will continue well beyond the festival.
Source: Fantastic Fest
