by Joseph Mauceri for Winter Film Festival
See the feature horror film The Driftless on February 21 @8:50PM at REGAL Union Square (850 Broadway) as part of New York City’s 14th Annual Winter Film Festival. Tickets now on sale!
Deep river valleys, tall limestone bluffs sawing through the sky… thousands of years ago, this unique portion of the Midwest escaped the crushing effects of the giant Ice Age glaciers. But with its scenic beauty, this preserved primal landscape also conceals unimaginable terrors. THE DRIFTLESS is a horror anthology that weaves together a macabre collection of four Midwest tales. The chilling stories include “Papa Bait,” “Booze,” “The Pool Keeper,” and the wraparound tale narrated by a mysterious antique store owner, Al, the storyteller at The Driftless Antiques & Oddities. These stories delve into a Mississippi River cult of masked assassins, a grieving musician’s struggle with a cursed bottle of liquor, a motel pool cleaner’s uncanny ability to retrieve time-altering artifacts, and a woman’s blood-thirsty revenge from beyond the grave.
Tim Connery is a Midwestern writer, director, and producer. After completing his undergraduate in directing at Columbia College Chicago in 2009 he moved to Iowa, where with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign, he wrote, directed and produced his first feature film in 2012 “Black Web.” The film went on to have its world premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival and its international premiere at Fantasia, in Montreal, the leading North American horror/sci-fi festival.
Connery is also a successful commercial filmmaker, which provided the opportunity to make his feature film, 2021’s DEATH METAL.
THE DRIFTLESS is his third feature film, which had its world premiere at Grimmfest in Manchester, UK, and will have its American East Coast premiere February 2026 at the 14th Annual Winter Film Festival taking place at the Regal Cinemas Union Square in New York City.
The music heard in the background of this episode is a piece composer Gregory Polzak wrote for the Hulu series LEGACY: The True Story of the LA Lakers and the end credits piece for THE DRIFTLESS.
About Winter Film Festival
Winter Film Festival is an all-volunteer women and minority-run organization as part of Winter Film Awards Inc, a 501(c)3 organization founded in 2011 to celebrate emerging talent in local and international filmmaking.
The 14th Annual Winter Film Festival runs February 18-22 2026 includes a diverse mixture of animated films, documentaries, comedies, romances, dramas, horror films, music videos and web series of all lengths. Our five-day event is jam-packed with screenings and Q&A sessions at NYC’s REGAL Union Square, six Education sessions/workshops and a variety of filmmaker networking events all coming to a glittering close on February 22 with our red-carpet gala Awards Ceremony.
Winter Film Festival programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Promotional support provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.
For more information about Winter Film Festival, visit WinterFilmFest.org
email us at info@winterfilmawards.com and visit us at Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
