Before zombies were brain-eating monsters, they were something else entirely: a metaphor for slavery and stolen humanity.

That’s the driving force behind Black Zombie, Maya Annik Bedward’s debut feature documentary that digs into how one of horror’s most recognizable figures was co-opted from Haitian spiritual traditions and repackaged for Hollywood. The film traces the zombie’s journey from colonial Haiti to modern cinema, reexamining classics like White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, and The Serpent and the Rainbow through a cultural lens that’s long overdue.

Bedward, an Afro-Caribbean-Canadian filmmaker, brings together cultural historians, artists, and genre legends including Slash, Tom Savini, and Mambo Labelle Déesse to reclaim the zombie’s deeper significance as a symbol of survival and resistance. The doc blends archival footage, vérité scenes, and critical analysis to show how Black spiritual practices were distorted and erased in the process.

Black Zombie premiered at SXSW 2026 and has since picked up acclaim at Hot Docs and BlackStar Film Festival. It opens in theaters September 11 via Kino Lorber, starting at New York’s Quad Cinema and LA’s Laemmle Nuart.

For indie creators working in horror or documentary, this is a reminder that reclaiming history can be just as powerful as creating new stories.

A 40-year-old shop in Raleigh, North Carolina just got some serious recognition from one of comics’ biggest indie publishers.

Capitol Comics won Image Comics’ Summer 2026 Select Retailer Award, beating out thousands of fan nominations during San Diego Comic-Con. The award highlights comic shops that go beyond just selling books, focusing on stores that build community, champion indie titles, and actually help readers find what they’ll love.

“We are beyond ecstatic,” the Capitol Comics team said. “Thank YOU for the support and the camaraderie you give us in this industry.”

Image launched the award to shine a light on the retailers who keep the direct market alive. Fans nominated shops based on criteria like hand-selling recommendations, inclusive atmosphere, smart displays, and support for creator-owned comics. The previous winner was ATOM Comics.

Capitol Comics gets a commemorative medallion, a spotlight Q&A on Image’s platforms, and an exclusive variant cover with their logo (limited to 250 copies).

It’s a rare moment where the backbone of the comics industry, the local shop, gets the credit it deserves. Image will open nominations for the next award cycle soon.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art just dropped details on its film program, and it’s not your typical museum screening series.

Instead of timed showings, two theaters will run curated films non-stop all day. Visitors can walk in and out whenever they want, treating cinema like a gallery experience.

The Robert Flaherty Theater focuses on documentary. You’ll find a new commissioned series called Seeing is Believing: The Story of Narrative Art, plus docs on artists like Norman Rockwell, Jim Lee, Charles Schulz, and Diego Rivera.

The Slavko Vorkapich Theater goes experimental. Early silents from Georges Méliès, animations by Winsor McCay and Walt Disney Studios, avant-garde work from the ’60s, Looney Tunes, anime from Cowboy Bebop, and even George Lucas’s student films from 1965-1969.

Both theaters are named after cinema pioneers. Flaherty helped invent documentary filmmaking. Vorkapich created montage sequences for Hollywood in the ’20s through ’40s and later taught film at USC, where Lucas studied.

Films range from a few minutes to 90 minutes. Come and go as you like.

The museum opens September 22 in LA’s Exposition Park. Tickets are on sale now through February 2027.

For filmmakers and film lovers, it’s a chance to see how storytelling through moving images evolved, from cave paintings to screen art.

A fake exorcist YouTuber teams up with the grandson of a legendary demon hunter to battle actual zombies. That’s the premise of “Demon Hunters,” the first-ever Taiwan-India co-production, hitting U.S. VOD platforms August 7.

The film stars Taiwan heartthrob JC Lin as Tommy, who fakes exorcisms for clicks, and India’s Arjan Bajwa as Sanjay, a tech expert who actually knows how to fight demons. It’s an action-horror-comedy-romance mashup directed by Mei-Juin Chen and produced by an all-female team, Gayathiri Guliani of India’s Kleos Entertainment Group and Cindy Shyu of Taiwan’s Light House Productions.

“Demon Hunters” already crushed it with audiences in Taiwan and India earlier this year. The production pulled in heavy hitters from Jackie Chan’s action and cinematography teams and features over 700 VFX shots. The soundtrack blends Taiwanese and Hindi tracks, including a Bollywood-style number distributed by Sony Music Taiwan.

The film launches on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, and everywhere else you rent or buy movies. It’ll be available in five languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Mandarin, and English.

This matters because cross-cultural collaborations like this are rare, especially when led entirely by women filmmakers bridging two massive film industries. It’s a blueprint for how indie international productions can build global audiences without Hollywood’s stamp of approval.

Emmy-winning filmmaker Minos Papas is bringing his psychological horror “Motherwitch” to Fantasia Film Festival on July 30th for its North American premiere.

The film follows Eleni, a painter in 1882 Cyprus who tries to resurrect her dead children but instead awakens the Kalikantzari, creatures from Cypriot folklore. Now she has to fight both grief and a curse threatening her village.

“Motherwitch” sold out its world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam and has been making the rounds at EFM Market, Guadalajara, Transilvania, BIFAN, and Galway Film Fleadh. After Fantasia, it heads to Croatia, Brazil’s Festival Filmes Incriveis, and Fantasy FilmFest Germany.

Papas shot the film between Los Angeles and Cyprus, drawing on years spent listening to bereaved parents, healers, and war veterans. The result is what he calls a love letter to Cyprus, its mythology and landscape woven into every frame.

The director, known for “Shutterbug” and “Tango on the Balcony,” also produced “Take Me Home,” which premiered at Sundance 2026 and screened at Berlinale and Tribeca.

“Motherwitch” is a co-production between Cyprus, North Macedonia, Canada, and the USA. B Rated International is handling sales.

For indie horror fans who love atmospheric folklore films, this one’s worth tracking down.

A 17-year-old girl lines up golf balls for wealthy men at an elite country club outside Manila. She wanders pristine grounds, samples luxuries meant for others, and stumbles into something dark beneath the manicured fairways.

That’s the setup for “Filipiñana,” Rafael Manuel’s debut feature that won the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at Sundance earlier this year. Executive produced by acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, the film follows Isabel as she navigates the stark divide between the club’s powerful members and its subservient staff. When she tries to return a lost golf club to the club’s patriarchal director, she ventures deeper into exclusive spaces where the violent truths of privilege, power, and her own past collide.

Critics are calling it a masterwork. The New Yorker says it “opens new vistas in the future of cinema,” while NPR praises it as “an incisive, slow-burning satire of capitalism and powerful men with far too much hubris.”

Kino Lorber is releasing the film August 28 at Film Forum in New York, followed by LA and select cities September 4. Shot in Filipino, English, and Ilokano, it’s the kind of singular vision that reminds you why theaters still matter.

A filmmaker spent nearly half a century checking in on the same five people, and the final chapter is about to hit screens.

Robb Moss’ THE BEND IN THE RIVER opens August 14 at Film Forum in New York, wrapping up a trilogy that started in 1978. Moss first filmed Barry, Danny, Cathy, Jeff, and Jim during a clothing-optional rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. That became Riverdogs in 1982. He caught up with them again in 2003 for THE SAME RIVER TWICE as they wrestled with middle age. Now they’re in their 70s, and Moss weaves new footage with images of their younger selves.

The 82-minute film is executive produced by Joel Coen and Frances McDormand. It premiered at Telluride last year.

Film Forum is programming the earlier installments around the premiere. Free screenings of Riverdogs happen August 12, with Moss introducing both. He’ll do a Q&A after THE SAME RIVER TWICE on August 13, then appear for discussions following THE BEND IN THE RIVER on August 14 and 15.

Critics are calling it poignant and deeply personal. Documentary Magazine said the trilogy is “as intimate and thoughtful an evocation of the process of aging as can be found in modern cinema.”

For indie filmmakers playing the long game, this is what patience and commitment look like.

A supernatural horror film inspired by one of America’s oldest unsolved mysteries hits theaters today.

“The Town That Takes” opens in select theaters across the top 20 North American markets, distributed by Atlas Distribution Company. The film takes the disappearance of the Lost Colony of Roanoke and the cryptic word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree and spins it into a Southern Gothic thriller.

The story follows Dean Richardson, an Army veteran trying to reconnect with his twelve-year-old son Wyatt after his ex-wife’s death. Their road trip turns dark when they stop in a remote town where locals whisper about CROATOAN. After a brutal murder and Wyatt’s sudden disappearance, Dean teams up with two detectives to uncover what’s really happening.

Director Britt Bankhead, who co-wrote the script with Jon Blaze, leads a Texas-based team. The cast includes Miles Mussenden (Doom Patrol), Mike Markoff (Hit Man), Grace Patterson (Slotherhouse), and Bankhead himself.

Atlas Distribution Company president Harmon Kaslow called it “genuinely frightening” and the kind of film that belongs on the big screen.

For indie horror filmmakers, this is a solid example of taking public domain history and building something fresh around it. No IP purchase necessary, just a good story rooted in American folklore.

Fifteen years after it first shocked readers, The Strange Talent of Luther Strode is getting the anniversary treatment it deserves.

Image Comics is releasing two collectible editions this October: an expanded Luther Strode #1 Anniversary Edition and an oversized Luther Strode #1 Anniversary Treasury Edition. The anniversary edition includes the complete first issue plus an art gallery pulling from the entire Luther Strode saga. The treasury edition puts the story in an oversized format on newsprint, a nice throwback for longtime fans.

“Fifteen years ago, me, Tradd, and Felipe pitched a little book to Image,” said creator Justin Jordan. “We hoped it’d find an audience. We never expected that people would still be digging it a decade and a half later.”

The series, created by Jordan, artist Tradd Moore, and colorist Felipe Sobreiro, became one of Image’s breakout hits alongside The Walking Dead and Saga. It launched both Jordan and Moore into the big leagues, leading to gigs at Marvel and DC. They came back twice more to complete the trilogy with The Legend of Luther Strode and The Legacy of Luther Strode.

The story follows Luther, a scrawny high schooler who discovers an ancient text called “The Method” hidden in a used bookstore. It transforms him into a superhuman powerhouse, but with violent instincts he can’t control. Think superhero origin meets slasher horror.

Both editions drop October 7 at comic shops.

Lindsay Lou wants you to know something about bluegrass. Those classic songs you’ve heard a thousand times? A lot of them were written by women.

Her new album, Bluegrass Women, out August 14th, shines a light on the genre’s overlooked female songwriters. The tracklist reads like a greatest hits collection, except every song was penned by a woman. “Some of these songs I sang for many years before realizing they were penned by a wife/mother/female artist,” Lou says.

The first single, “All I Ever Loved Was You,” was written by Dorothy Skaggs, mother of Ricky Skaggs. Lou remembers hearing Ricky and Keith Whitley sing it in Ralph Stanley’s band. “The harmonies and the tenderness of it blew me away.”

Lou recruited some of bluegrass’s finest for the project. Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, Aoife O’Donovan, Sarah Jarosz, Laurie Lewis, and Alison Brown all appear on the record. They’re not just the best female pickers around, they’re GRAMMY winners and IBMA Award winners at the top of the field, period.

A four-part mini documentary about the making of the album drops soon. Lou also makes her Grand Ole Opry debut July 31st.

This matters because representation shapes who feels welcome in a genre. Lou’s proving women have always belonged in bluegrass.