This year marks the tenth year for the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival! PUFF weekend is always a treat, featuring truly independent cinema from all around the world, spanning every genre imaginable. Features, shorts, locally shot curiosities, horror, drama, comedy, music videos, and even experimental oddities. There’s something here for everyone, and plenty of new things for the even the most passive cinephile to discover. In the previous decade of programming, PUFF has done incredible work brining unique gems to the big screen, and the 2025 lineup continues the trend of unmissable cinema that you simply won’t find anywhere else.
The first night of programming brought in local film club Girls Like Horror, who have made quite the name for themselves in creating fun, inclusive film events in the Philadelphia area. For PUFF, the club brass programmed two films by women filmmakers: one a contemporary vampire tale, and the other, a truly bizarre horror flick from the ‘80s.
You Know What You Are (dir. Rose Trimboli)
It’s only occurring to me now that a lot of vampire films fall into the subgenre of “hangout movie.” It seems weird on paper, but it makes perfect sense: when you can’t die, and you are forced to divorce yourself from the preciousness of life itself, there’s little else to do between gruesome meals than to just … hang out. There’s no ticking clock of mortality, nor is there any need to seek out a ton of cash. You’ve got a wealth of the most precious resource there is: time.
This is the case for Faith (Eloise Lola Gordon). She hasn’t been a vampire for long, and is only just now coming to terms with what her condition means in the long run. She’s new in town and is working double duty to feed her habit and maintain a low profile. It’s a quiet shore town with little to do: perfect for a creature of the night who just wants to be left alone. But Faith is a social being, and she soon connects with a group of similarly lost youths (although none supernaturally so), forming bonds of both friendship and romance that threaten her search for peace and solitude.
You Know What You Are takes a sleepy tone, lulling the viewer into feeling the off-season vibes of the setting, before shocking them with blunt bursts of bloody violence. Faith’s struggle to maintain a dual life prove a solid metaphor for the transition into adulthood, as well as for the discovery/exploration of queer identity. Trimboli’s script finds ample avenues to connect the characters to one another in surprising ways, while also providing opportunities to showcase a strong cast of unknown performers.
I am convinced that I want to be a vampire and that I want to live in a shore town. I am probably wrong about both of these things.
The Oracle (dir. Roberta Findlay)
A LOT happens in this movie. In fact, every few minutes this nutty film redefines itself to such a degree that giving an accurate plot description is an exercise in futility (but it provides a chance for me to urge the leaders of Girls Like Horror to start doing an etiquette reminder before their screenings — every single one I’ve been to has had a chatterbox in the crowd treating the event as their own personal MST3K, which in this case was a woman exclaiming “Whaaaaaat? Noooooo. Oh my gaaaahhhhhd” anytime anything even remotely notable happened on screen, which, as previously stated, makes up the bulk of this film). The most basic synopsis is that the film follows a woman who obtains a mysterious Oujia-adjacent esoteric antique that handwrites messages from the beyond. This, of course, opens our heroine up to any of a number of occurrences ranging from the spooky to the batshit insane.
The Oracle is a true “lost” gem that features everything genre enthusiasts love all under one roof. Demons, possession, gore, murder, mystery, sex, rubber monster hands with gross fingernails — you name it. It’s also tremendously well-directed. Findlay, as we learned from the post-screening Q&A with Professor/Author/Findlay scholar Whitney Strub, was a talented and committed craftsperson who only fell into genre/adult cinema as a matter of necessity. Per Strub, Findlay had nothing but contempt for the types of movies she made, and didn’t have many kind things to say about the people who enjoy them. Luckily for us, there’s no accounting for taste, and Findlay, for all her talent, is allowed to be wrong. Judge me as she may, I’ll be hunting down as much of her work as I can find. A huuuuge dual thanks to PUFF and Girls Like Horror for putting this lesser known piece of gonzo cinema on my radar!
