MEET OUR 2026 MONSTER FEST JURY
With MONSTER FEST 2026 almost upon us, we’re thrilled to introduce the jury who will have the unenviable task of deciding this year’s Monster Fest Award winners.
At the heart of Monster Fest is our competition program, celebrating bold, original and uncompromising genre filmmaking from Australia and around the world. Each year, films are selected by the Monster Fest programming team for their distinct vision, daring approach to genre and ability to surprise, provoke and occasionally horrify us.
Previous recipients of Monster Fest’s top honours include Brandon Cronenberg’s POSSESSOR, Julia Ducournau’s RAW, Coralie Fargeat’s REVENGE, Lars von Trier’s THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT and, most recently, John Adams, Zelda Adams and Toby Poser’s MOTHER OF FLIES, which took home the Golden Monster in 2025.
Tasked with separating this year’s damned from the truly divine are four respected Australian film writers, critics, programmers and scholars: Emma Westwood, Simon Foster, Stephen A Russell and Sally Christie.
The jury will determine three major awards: Best International Feature, recognising outstanding genre filmmaking from around the world; Best Australian Feature, celebrating the unique voices and talent emerging from our own backyard; and the ultimate honour, The Golden Monster – Best Feature, awarded to the film that best captures the spirit of Monster Fest.
EMMA WESTWOOD
Emma Westwood writes and talks about many things, but she is particularly enamoured with cinema history. She’s a regular contributor to Blu-ray and limited edition releases for labels in the US, UK and Australia – in both written and commentary form – as well as podcasts and numerous publications.
You may have heard her on the airwaves in Melbourne when she was a co-host on Triple R’s weekly Plato’s Cave radio show. Or you may have read one of her books on monster movies, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, John Frankenheimer’s Seconds or James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein.
SIMON FOSTER
Having survived that ’80s/’90s boom period working in the home video heyday, Simon Foster pivoted away from money to forge a career as a film industry journalist, reviewer and broadcaster.
Over the last thirty years, he has written for SBS, FilmInk and Empire and broadcast for ABC Radio and Nine Media. He is currently the co-host of the Screen Watching podcast and editor of the Screen-Space newsletter on Substack. He is also the founder and Festival Director of the Sydney Science Fiction Festival.
STEPHEN A RUSSELL
Stephen A Russell is an award-winning film critic and freelance journalist, based in Melbourne but imported from Glasgow, whose writing and/or dulcet tones – snorts included – can be found across a variety of outlets including the ABC, SBS, ScreenHub, The Saturday Paper, Time Out, Flicks, The Big Issue and more.
Contributing commentary tracks, visual essays and in-depth analysis for physical media, he is also a published author, including on James Whale’s iconic Bride of Frankenstein.
SALLY CHRISTIE
Sally Christie is a film scholar, programmer and broadcaster based in Melbourne. She is a PhD candidate at RMIT University, where her research explores representations of Satan and female agency in cinema.
Her other research interests include horror, cult, queer and exploitation cinema, with a particular passion for films that challenge conventions around gender, sexuality and power. Sally is a co-programmer of Melbourne-based film collective Cinemaniacs and regularly contributes to film publications and physical media releases.
She also really loves John Waters and hooning around town in a hearse.
MONSTER FEST 2026 runs from October 2 – 10 at Cinema Nova, Melbourne, before heading around Australia from October 30 – November 2.