Meet our 2025 Monster Fest Jury
Monster Fest has built its reputation as Australia’s home for horror and genre cinema, a place where bold, original and uncompromising films are discovered and celebrated. Central to the festival is the competition program, which highlights filmmakers willing to take risks, works that push genre in new directions, challenge conventions and leave a lasting impact on audiences.
Nominated films are selected by the Monster Fest programming team for their distinct vision, daring approach to genre and ability to connect with audiences in powerful ways.
Previous winners of the Monster Fest Awards include Brandon Cronenberg’s POSSESSOR (2020), Julia Ducournau’s RAW (2016), Coralie Fargeat’s REVENGE (2017) and Lars von Trier’s THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT (2018).
This year’s competition rests with a jury of respected Australian writers, critics and programmers: Emma Westwood, Kate Fitzpatrick, Simon Foster, Stephen A Russell and Spiro Economopoulos.
The jury will determine three major awards. Best International Feature will recognise outstanding work from filmmakers around the world. Best Australian Feature will highlight the unique voices and talent emerging from our local industry. And the ultimate honour, The Golden Monster, will be awarded to the feature that best captures the spirit of Monster Fest overall.
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 other books on Monster Movies, David Cronenberg’s The Fly and John Frankenheimer’s Seconds or James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein.
Kate Fitzpatrick is a Senior Programmer at MIFF and has worked in the arts for more than 15 years across programming, curation, and audience engagement, including at ACMI. She has served on juries for Melbourne Fringe, MQFF, WA Screen Awards, and the Dome Under Film Festival, bringing her critical eye and passion for cinema to platforms that celebrate new voices. Kate has been an active presence in the broader screen community, appearing on panels at SXSW in both Austin and Sydney, the St Kilda Film Festival and Mercury Resource Centre, has been a guest on the Good Movie Mondays podcast and made regular appearances on ABC Radio and Triple R. In recognition of her contribution to the screen sector, Kate was named one of Screen International’s Future Leaders in 2024, an acknowledgment of her influence and potential within the global film festival landscape.
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, Empire and broadcast for ABC Radio and Nine Media. He is currently the co-host of the Screen Watching podcast, editor of the Screen-Space newsletter on Substack and President of the Film Critics Circle of Australia. He is also the founder and festival director of the Sydney Science Fiction Festival.
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 with 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.
Spiro Economopoulos is the Artistic Director of the Europa! Europa Film Festival, a celebration of new European cinema and was previously the Program Director for the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, one of the largest and oldest LGBTI+ film festivals in the southern hemisphere. Previously, he was part of the Film Programming and Exhibitions team at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Spiro has also led the programming for the Dungog Film Festival, the Perth Commonwealth Film Festival, written plays for Melbourne Workers Theatre, directed and written short films for SBS and has been a regular film reviewer and writer for various publications including Australia’s No.1 online arts platform, ArtsHub.
Monster Fest runs from October 3 to 11 at Cinema Nova (VIC) followed by October 17 to 19 at Event Cinemas Brisbane City (QLD) & Event Cinemas Innaloo (WA) and October 24 to 26 at Event Cinemas Burwood (NSW) & Event Cinemas Marion (SA).