This year, the UMFF takes on a new challenge, moving beyond the constraints and limits of place with newly created venues: the Tent Cinema, the Deck Cinema, and the Chabak (car-camping) Cinema, all making the most of the natural landscape of the Yeongnam Alps. This year's Special Screening consists of a horror film program designed exclusively for the Chabak Cinema, together with a live cinema concert by the Sooyoung Chin Cinema Ensemble, which has been performing its own original scores for silent film screenings since 2019. The film accompanied by the ensemble's live music is Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality(1923) — the essence of silent comedy, crowned by Keaton's breathtaking stunt hanging from a waterfall without a double, and blending comedy with a family feud and sharp social satire.

Launching this year, the Chabak Screening 'Familiar Hell' presents three Korean horror films that prove independent cinema can be every bit as frightening: HOMECAM, in which a chilling woman visible only on the home camera hovers around a daughter; The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra, in which a mold-born creature rising from a former couple's mattress relentlessly hunts for human vertebrae; and The Only Child in the Butchery, in which a man discovers that the butcher shop he trusted as family was in fact a site of exploitation. You will witness the moment our most familiar places — home, bed, and family — turn into hell. The following night brings 'An Occult Invitation', gathering the Hollywood horror we know best: tales of possession and demonic spirits. From The Exorcist, the first horror film ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and a milestone of the genre, to The Conjuring, which turns the familiar ingredients of a haunted house, exorcism, and a true story into refined horror, and Hereditary, in which a curse begun by a grandmother ensnares an entire family. As the autumn night deepens, we invite you to an experience of horror in the heart of the mountains.

― Jinna Lee, Programmer​