A Few Highlights

We pride ourselves on exhibiting the movies that everyone will be talking about in the next year. In past festivals, Anomaly has hosted the U.S. Premieres of both Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink and the international holiday-horror anthology Deathcember; regional premieres of Jane Schoenbrun's We're All Going to the World's Fair, Michelle Garza Cervera's Huesera: The Bone Woman, and many more.

Films that have won our Audience Awards have hailed from India, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, the United States, and beyond!

We have also hosted drive-ins, panel discussions, sneak previews, and celebrated classic genre films. In 2022, we screened the 40th anniversary of Friday the 13th: Part 3 on 35mm in chromatic 3D to an ecstatic crowd, with our friends at Saturday Night Rewind and Fright-Rags.

Mission & Focus

Showcases for original genre films are needed now more than ever before. These are the films that inhabit our imaginations, shape our dreams, and reflect our reality. There’s a special magic that comes from the collective film festival experience: sharing brand-new wonders and horrors together, in the same theatrical room... and the conversations afterwards. And we want to be the fuel that keeps it burning in the hearts of movie-lovers as we search out the favorites yet to be found — the new cult canon possibilities yet to be experienced.

Anomaly is entirely volunteer-run and operated, and committed to supporting and championing the Rochester community as a hub for smart, passionate filmgoing audiences, both in and out of a movie theater.

Submit Your Film

Public film submissions for our annual November festival run from Winter (usually opening in February) through the end of Summer (usually closing in August). We are looking for the best new genre films — features and shorts — from around the world. See our FilmFreeway page for further details, deadlines, and fees.