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"Something extremely sinister happened in this apartment." Utopia has revealed the official trailer for a wacky, weird indie horror / dark comedy called The Scary of Sixty-First, the feature debut of actor / filmmaker Dasha Nekrasova. This premiered at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, where it won the Best First Feature Award. Two roommates' lives are upended after finding out that their new Manhattan apartment harbors a dark secret – it was previously owned by the infamous Jeffrey Epstein. This is That film. The Berlinale jury stated it's, "an audacious take on genre cinema that confronts contemporary issues such as global power structures, sexual abuse, conspiracy theories and the dark corners of the internet in a wildly twisted, witty and subversive manner." The Scary of Sixty-First stars Madeline Quinn and Betsey Brown as the two tenants, with Stephen Gurewitz, Dasha Nekrasova, and Mark Rapaport. This will be showing on 35mm at select cinemas starting in December,...

The worlds of Jeffrey Epstein, “Eyes Wide Shut,” and QAnon conspiracy theories collide to nightmarish results in “Red Scare” podcast host Dasha Nekrasova’s fiery feature debut “The Scary of Sixty-First.” Given the film’s Upper East Side New York City setting, there’s a posh Roman Polanski vibe to the eerie proceedings as two young women move into an apartment that once served as a hub for Epstein’s sex trafficking ring — and maybe a portal to hell?

If that’s not enough to titillate you, here’s the official synopsis:

While out apartment hunting, college pals Noelle and Addie stumble upon the deal of a lifetime: a posh duplex on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. But soon after moving in, a more sinister picture of the apartment emerges when a mysterious woman arrives and claims the property used to belong to the infamous and recently deceased Jeffrey Epstein.

Exclusive: AMC’s genre streamer Shudder and sales and distribution firm Utopia have picked up Dasha Nekrasova’s horror debut The Scary Of Sixty-First.

The film, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, sees two roommates’ lives upended after finding out that their new Manhattan apartment harbors a dark secret. The narrative takes a sinister turn after they discover it was once owned by the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Shudder has taken SVOD rights in North America, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, while Utopia has picked up remaining rights. Utopia will release the film in theaters and on digital later this year and the company’s Utopia’s Head of Sales David Betesh will be selling available international rights at the upcoming Cannes market.

The deal was negotiated by Digiacomo for Utopia and Emily Gotto for Shudder with UTA’s Independent Film Group.

Actor and podcaster Dasha Nekrasova,...

“She’s a very sick girl and she’s always been into, like, the UK,” says Noelle (Madeline Quinn) about her roommate Addie (Betsie Brown) to her new friend The Girl (Dasha Nekrasova). Sick fascinations are the instruments of demonic evil in Dasha Nekrasova’s debut feature The Scary of Sixty-First. Quinn co-wrote Scary with Nekrasova based on their shared feeling of futility in the aftermath of Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Unsatisfied with the story that Epstein committed suicide, in the summer of 2019 Nekrasova held “Epstein Truther MeetUps” to investigate his death with fellow skeptical New Yorkers. Her truther explorations became an idea for the film and Nekrasova’s Girl character could be a stand-in for the actress, but that isn’t too important. The real story with The Scary of Sixty-First is: if you speak of the devil, he shall appear.

While friends Noelle and Addie tour an apartment on the Upper East Side,...

In Dasha Nekrasova’s feature directorial debut, The Scary of Sixty-First, New York City is a desolate place. The sky is a muddy beige with no indication of sun. The cast is tight and minimalist with rarely any extras to be seen. The streets are deserted and the shops are empty. The only people that seem to exist are new roommates Addie (Betsey Brown) and Noelle (Madeline Quinn), as well as anyone else who happens to be in their orbit.

Addie is an archetypal aspiring actress with a chronically disinterested boyfriend named Greg (Mark Rapaport). Noelle is an unemployed wise-ass, with ...

In Dasha Nekrasova’s feature directorial debut, The Scary of Sixty-First, New York City is a desolate place. The sky is a muddy beige with no indication of sun. The cast is tight and minimalist with rarely any extras to be seen. The streets are deserted and the shops are empty. The only people that seem to exist are new roommates Addie (Betsey Brown) and Noelle (Madeline Quinn), as well as anyone else who happens to be in their orbit.

Addie is an archetypal aspiring actress with a chronically disinterested boyfriend named Greg (Mark Rapaport). Noelle is an unemployed wise-ass, with ...

There can be a fine line between a good idea and a terrible one followed through with utter conviction, and it’s along said line that “The Scary of Sixty-First” dances with heedless, wicked abandon. A brash, gutsy, morbidly funny first feature from actor-filmmaker-podcaster Dasha Nekrasova, it runs on a premise that could have been written as a dare, or a prank: Two female friends move into a freakishly affordable apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that turns out to have been owned by the late pedophile mogul Jeffrey Epstein, and gradually find themselves consumed by its very bad vibes. Good taste, as you might well guess, is not on the agenda here. But underpinning the edgelord provocations and cheerfully cheap B-movie stylings of Nekrasova’s film is a dark, roiling rage that’s no joke: As a reflection on the abuse that powerful men mete out without due consequence,...

Did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself, or was he murdered before the wealthy sex offender could point a finger and potentially implicate any of the high-profile, well-heeled predators in his orbit?

That’s the premise of Dasha Nekrasova’s provocative directorial debut “The Scare of Sixty-First.”

It’s a subject of intense interest to Nekrasova, an actor and host of the podcast “Red Scare,” who recalls living near the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Epstein was found dead in August of 2019. His presence, however unwelcome, loomed large over the city, and she found herself deep in an internet rabbit hole about conspiracy theories relating to Epstein’s demise. She became deeply suspicious of the true nature of his death, which was ruled a suicide with investigators saying the businessman strangled himself with his bed sheet.

Though Epstein doesn’t appear in “The Scary of Sixty-First,” which premieres Tuesday at the Berlin Film Festival,...

There’s alchemy at work in Dasha Nekrasova’s debut film “The Scary of Sixty-First,” the kind that can turn what’s old into what’s new. Equal parts ’70s-style paranoia thriller, Polanski-infused apartment horror, “Eyes Wide Shut” homage, and empathetic critical commentary on the conspiracy theories craze, this hallucinatory pastiche is even more than the sum of its cinematically riveting parts.

Addie (Betsey Brown) and Noelle (Madeline Quinn) are apartment-hunting in New York City. That alone is the stuff of horror. But in their case they find an ideal place right away — a shockingly cheap flat on the Upper East Side. They commit to it on the spot, despite an odd tarot card being left behind that suggests some ominous symbology. (Anyone who’s moved into a Manhattan pad and discovered a Pentagrama Esoterico sign on the wall and thought “What’s that about?” can relate.)

One day, an...

As one half of the incendiary and oddly prescient Red Scare podcast, the Belarusian-born, New York-based actress, writer, and (now) filmmaker Dasha Nekrasova occupies––alongside co-host Anna Kachiyan––a singular place in today’s film discourse. It’s no wonder news of her directorial debut has garnered such intrigue, not least given the audacity of its subject matter.

Premiering in the ever-tasty Encounters sidebar at this year’s virtual Berlin International Film Festival, The Scary of Sixty-First (which Nekrasova co-wrote with Madeline Quinn) already boasts one of the great premises of recent years: a woman is possessed by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims after moving into a flat on the Upper East Side that was once owned by the notorious pedophile billionaire. As film, as horror, and as provocation, it does not flatter to deceive. On a Zoom call from New York ahead of the film’s premiere, Nekrasova...

Day 3 of this year’s Berlinale announcements contain the line-ups for Encounters, Panorama and Perspektive Deutsches Kino. Check back in tomorrow for the Competition program.

Encounters was first introduced at last year’s festival to support new voices in cinema. A three-member jury will award Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award during the industry event in March, with the prizes handed out physically at the summer event.

The selection consists of 12 titles from 16 countries, including seven debuts. Scroll down for the full list.

Over in Panorama, there are 19 titles including 14 world premieres. Several titles arrive from Sundance such as Prano Bailey-Bond’s UK feature Censor and Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors.

Perspektive Deutsches Kino will again present new views on German cinema, with six titles, all of which are world premieres. The full lists are below.

This week so far has seen the Generation, Retrospective, Forum, Forum Expanded and Shorts programs announced.