A guilt-ridden young woman, two tragic accidents, and a voice calling from the woods. That’s the setup for CAMP, a new horror feature from writer-director Avalon Fast hitting theaters June 26 courtesy of Dark Sky Films.

The film follows Emily, who takes a job as a summer camp counselor to escape the weight of two devastating tragedies from her past. Surrounded by supportive fellow counselors, she starts to believe in a fresh start. But when a voice begins whispering from deep in the woods, urging her to go home, Emily’s fragile peace starts to unravel.

CAMP has been making waves on the festival circuit, winning Fantastic Fest’s Next Wave Award and screening at BeyondFest, Sitges, Brooklyn Horror, and Outfest. Critics have compared it to The Virgin Suicides, with RogerEbert.com noting how the film uses grief and mourning as storytelling tools instead of easy answers. Projected Figures called it “a dizzying, unnerving examination of the strength and power that women can use to uplift each other.”

Fast, who calls her work “GIRL HORROR,” previously directed Honeycomb, which premiered at Slamdance in 2022. The film stars Zola Grimmer, Alice Wordsworth, and Cherry Moore.

Austin City Limits is going big for its 25th anniversary. The festival just dropped its 2026 lineup, and it’s stacked with Charli XCX, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Twenty One Pilots, Lorde, Skrillex, Kings of Leon, and The xx headlining across two weekends.

The festival runs October 2-4 and October 9-11 at Zilker Park. Three-day tickets go on sale today at noon Central.

Beyond the headliners, the lineup pulls from every corner of the music world. Turnstile, Labrinth, The War On Drugs, and Bleachers anchor the mid-tier. Latin artists including Young Miko, rusowsky, and Rodrigo y Gabriela get real estate too. And ACL is still doing what it does best: giving rising talent a stage. Artists like Paris Paloma, Claire Rosinkranz, and Sienna Spiro are all on the bill.

Texas artists are well represented. Bo Staloch, Calder Allen, World Famous Pets, and the Huston Tillotson University Jazz Collective are among the homegrown acts playing this year.

Since 2006, the festival has funneled over $79 million into Austin’s parks through its partnership with Austin Parks Foundation. Last year alone, ticket sales contributed $8.5 million toward park improvements across the city.

For a festival that started as a PBS taping series, ACL has become one of the most important stages for indie and mainstream artists alike. Twenty-five years in, it’s still the place where careers get made.

Marcel Ruiz, best known for playing Alex Alvarez in Netflix’s One Day at a Time, is stepping behind the camera for the first time. His debut as a screenwriter and producer comes with Summer of Three, which world premieres at Tribeca Festival’s U.S. Narrative Competition in June.

The film is directed by his father, Carlitos Ruiz-Ruiz, whose debut Lovesickness premiered at Tribeca back in 2007. Now they’re back together with a deeply personal collaboration.

Summer of Three follows 17-year-old Javi, who returns to Puerto Rico after years away, first for his grandfather’s funeral. What starts as a reluctant trip turns into an unexpected homecoming when he meets Luife and Kiki, two misfits who pull him into a sultry love triangle. The film explores identity, grief, and belonging through a summer of heat, music, and emotional awakening.

The soundtrack blends reggaeton classics with Puerto Rico’s indie scene, grounding the story in the island’s youthful energy. Newcomers Kiki Montilla and Paolo Schoene join Ruiz in the cast.

This is exactly the kind of project Tribeca was built for: personal, bold, and rooted in cultural identity. A father-son collaboration premiering where the father’s career began? That’s the indie dream.

A new video podcast is asking a simple question: where do revolutions begin?

Living for the City, hosted by MacArthur Fellow and bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib, traces music movements back to the neighborhoods, record stores, and street corners where they started. The eight-episode first season focuses on Detroit, exploring how the city shaped Motown, techno, and hip-hop.

Abdurraqib, known for his work in The New Yorker and books like A Little Devil in America, sits down with artists, DJs, producers, and the people behind the scenes who built these movements from the ground up. It’s his first time hosting on camera.

“I am someone who has a deep investment in not just sounds, but the roots of the sounds, the hands and hearts that went into making the sounds,” Abdurraqib said.

The series premieres May 13 on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, with new episodes dropping every Wednesday. Future seasons will spotlight other cities that have shaped music across generations.

Living for the City is produced by Side Stage, a network from Live Nation and Magnet Originals.

For creators trying to understand how local scenes go global, this one’s worth watching.

Foster the People are hitting the road this fall with a 25-date North American tour that promises to bring their latest live show vision to cities across the U.S. and Canada.

The “Good Mourning Sunshine” tour kicks off September 9 in Phoenix and wraps October 23 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Goth Babe joins most dates, with The Beaches supporting at Red Rocks. The run includes stops at Forest Hills Stadium in New York, Red Rocks in Colorado, and Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre.

The tour follows a massive 2025 world tour behind Paradise State of Mind, the band’s third Top 10 album. That record earned praise from Billboard, NME, and Forbes before selling out shows across North America, Europe, and Latin America.

Foster the People debuted a reimagined live show at Coachella earlier this year, built around a 1950s utopia that unravels into psychedelic chaos. It’s a visual commentary on the modern world that they’ll now bring to amphitheaters and theaters nationwide.

Citi presale starts May 5 at 8am local, followed by artist presale at 10am. General on-sale is May 8 at 10am via fosterthepeople.com.

For indie and mainstream acts alike, fall tour season just got a lot more interesting.

Teenager Cata is having a pretty normal summer on Mallorca, swimming in the Mediterranean and flirting with a Swedish boy. Then her grandmother dies. One day, she slips into her abuela’s dress and feels something pull her closer to the woman she just lost.

That’s the setup for “Forastera,” a Spanish ghost story that trades scares for something quieter and more unsettling. Director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias uses the sun-drenched island as the backdrop for a film about grief, memory, and the strange ways the dead stay with us.

The debut feature won the FIPRESCI Prize at Toronto International Film Festival and picked up awards at festivals across Spain, including Best New Director for Aleñar Iglesias at Seminci Valladolid. Critics are calling it tender, poetic, and a revelation for star Zoe Stein.

“Forastera” opens May 29 at Film Forum in New York. The title translates to “stranger,” which feels right for a movie about becoming someone else while trying to hold onto someone you’ve lost. It’s the kind of ghost story that lingers because it’s less about hauntings and more about what we carry forward.

What happens when a bestselling fantasy author is a decade past deadline and completely out of ideas?

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, the duo behind Criminal and Kill Or Be Killed, are exploring that nightmare in Unfinished Tales, a new original graphic novel coming this winter from Image Comics.

The story follows Finnegan Blake, a wildly successful author whose epic fantasy series became a massive TV show. There’s just one problem: he’s ten years overdue on the final book and has no clue how to finish it. When an old friend arrives with a solution to his writer’s block, things spiral into dark territory fast.

“I’ve always been fascinated by why people write, or in this case, why they don’t,” Brubaker said. “It’s a deep dive into the world of writers and publishing, the pressure to succeed, and what that may cost you. It’s also a very fucked up thriller about egos and ambition.”

The book mixes Stephen King’s Misery with The Talented Mr. Ripley, and somehow threads the needle for fans of both Tolkien and Megan Abbott.

Unfinished Tales hits comic shops November 11 and bookstores December 8. For indie creators grinding through their own deadlines and creative demons, this one might hit a little too close to home.

A trio of stories connected by an ancient ginkgo tree just won director Ildikó Enyedi the Sloan Science on Screen Award.

SFFILM announced the honor for Enyedi’s Silent Friend at the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs through May 4. The film stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Léa Seydoux, and Luna Wedler as souls linked across a century. Enyedi takes home $5,000 along with the award.

But the bigger story is the $115,000 in grants going to five filmmakers developing science-driven screenplays. The Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative, now in its tenth year, pairs writers with science advisors to shape stories where discovery becomes drama.

Destiny Macon’s Talk Black follows a Black engineer battling gentrification and workplace sexism. Justin Kim WooSŏk’s The Green Corridor tracks a Korean-American anthropologist searching for a rumored tiger in the DMZ. Each receives $35,000.

Three more writers split $20,000 grants for early-stage projects inspired by real scientific breakthroughs. Lane Unsworth’s Hello Neighbor imagines how NASA would announce alien life. Sid Gopinath and Aditya Joshi’s One Inch From Earth chronicles the scramble to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa.

“We’re getting to support a filmmaker at the screenplay stage while the story is being shaped,” says SFFILM’s Masashi Niwano.

Since 2015, the initiative has supported 40 artists. The goal? Help audiences connect to science through cinema that gets the facts right.

A farmhand’s simple life gets upended when village elders force him to march across Transylvania with a dangerous stranger. Their mission: take down the region’s murderous viceroy.

That’s the setup for Regicide, a new ongoing series from Image Comics launching August 12. Writer Patrick Kindlon (Tigress Island, Gehenna: Naked Aggression) and artist Ludovic Lalliat (Akutezoïde) are promising a bloodsoaked fantasy that mixes Dracula with Berserk.

“True monster-of-the-issue storytelling where you are guaranteed sensational and sensual battles for the souls of our heroes every month,” Kindlon said. “Violence you can feel in a world so dripping with evil the droplets will hit your head as you read.”

The series will feature multiple covers for the first issue, including variants by Atomcyber and Kerbcrawlerghost, plus a blank sketch cover for artists. Digital versions will be available through Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Play.

For indie creators working in dark fantasy, this is the kind of swing-for-the-fences project that shows there’s still room for uncompromising horror storytelling in comics.