Havilah Malone Hosts Femme Fatal Film Festival and World Premiere of Serenity

Fourth annual showcase of female-led horror and sci-fi shorts hits LOOK Dine-In Cinemas Glendale Oct. 18, hosted by actress Havilah Malone. Media welcome.

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, October 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Halloween-season showcase for female-led horror and sci-fi shorts takes over LOOK Dine-In Cinemas Glendale on Sunday, October 18

The Femme FATAL Film Festival returns for its fourth annual edition on Sunday, October 18, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. at LOOK Dine-In Cinemas Glendale, with a night of female-led horror and science fiction short films headlined by the world premiere of SERENITY, a new horror comedy written and directed by Amelia Joyce and produced by Roberta Sparta, the festival’s co-founders.

Actress, producer and four-time #1 bestselling author Havilah Malone (HBO’s “Barry” and “Insecure,” CBS’s “NCIS: New Orleans”) hosts the evening and pulls double duty, appearing on screen in the SERENITY ensemble alongside Kylr Coffman (the Green Day comedy “Nimrods”), Aaron Staton (“Mad Men”), Vivian Bang (“Always Be My Maybe”), Felix Merback (“Dead Janitors Club”) and Kurt Bonzell. Writer-director Amelia Joyce, producer Roberta Sparta and members of the cast will take part in a post-screening Q&A.

The night also features special guests Ivotres Littles, host of the YouTube channel Horror Movies and Beyond; Lilith Fury, actress, producer, and outspoken advocate for body positivity and for representation of marginalized communities in horror; and Kaci Hansen, “The Homicidal Homemaker,” the horror food blogger and cooking-show host often called the “Martha Stewart of the Macabre.”

Why this year

Horror and science fiction are among the most commercially reliable genres in film. They are also among the hardest for women to break into as directors, cinematographers and creative leads, and the numbers are moving the wrong way.

According to San Diego State University’s 28th annual Celluloid Ceiling report, women directed 13% of the 250 top-grossing films of 2025, down from 16% the year before, and just 10% of the top 100. The same research center found that the share of top-grossing films with female protagonists fell from 42% in 2024 to 29% in 2025.

When the big-studio door narrows, independent showcases are where new genre voices get seen. Femme FATAL was built to be one of those rooms.

“Women are making some of the most inventive work in horror and sci-fi right now, and what they often don’t get is a room,” said Sparta. “A theater, a crowd that came on purpose, a microphone afterward. That’s what we built: not a networking event with films attached, but an actual night at the movies.”

“We started this because we needed it ourselves,” said Joyce. “Every year the submissions get stronger and stranger, and every year somebody in that theater meets the person they end up making their next film with. That’s the part I didn’t expect and now care about most.”

“Horror has long given women more to play than the victim. We’re the survivor, the one who figures it out first, the one still standing at the end,” said Malone. “This festival gives the women behind the camera that same final word, and this year I get to celebrate them from the stage and from the screen.”

The 2026 program

SERENITY leans into humanity’s dark side: an introverted young man struggling with a quiet, contained dread takes a chance on an unusual peer support group.

The evening runs as a single curated program rather than competing tracks, so the whole audience sees the whole slate together. Filmmakers attend in person, Q&As follow the screenings, and full dine-in service is available throughout.

The festival focuses on female-identifying directors and also screens films directed by men that center female leads or department heads, on the view that closing the gender gap in genre film is a collaborative effort.

From one private screening to year four

Femme FATAL began almost by accident. Sparta and Joyce booked a private screening for FROGGY, an eco-horror short Joyce wrote and directed and Sparta produced. Instead of showing one film, they invited other independent filmmakers to screen alongside it and added a Q&A. The response made the decision for them: that night became an annual Halloween-season festival that now draws submissions from filmmakers across the world.

Tickets, submissions and media

Tickets are $25.99 at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/femme-fatal-film-festival-tickets-1999633464521. Filmmakers can submit for future editions through FilmFreeway at filmfreeway.com/FemmeFatalFilmFest. More information is at ameliajoyce.com/femme-fatal and on Instagram at @femmefatalfilmfest.

Media are invited to cover the event. Press credentials and interview requests with Amelia Joyce, Havilah Malone, Roberta Sparta and the SERENITY cast are available through Roberta Sparta at roberta@spartaproductions.co or (310) 614-9792.

About the Femme FATAL Film Festival

The Femme FATAL Film Festival is an annual Los Angeles showcase for female-led horror and science fiction short films, held each Halloween season, with curated screenings and live filmmaker Q&As. It was founded in 2023 by producer Roberta Sparta of Sparta Productions, which develops and produces independent narrative work across genre and drama, and writer-director and photographer Amelia Joyce of Black Dog Media and Boys Club Creative, whose directing credits include SERENITY and FROGGY.

Roberta Sparta
Sparta Productions LLC
+1 310-614-9792
roberta@spartaproductions.co
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SERENITY Official Trailer – Horror Comedy from Amelia Joyce, World Premiere at Femme FATAL Film Festival, Oct. 18 in Glendale

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