A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tortured her as a child leads her and her best friend, also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity. Controversial and polarizing, Martyrs is an uncanny, visceral and psychologically intense examination of trauma, pain, and transcendence. “[T]he Western world is sick… Horror cinema allowed me to express this in a very direct way. Martyrs is almost a work of prospective fiction that shows a dying world, almost like a pre-apocalypse. It’s a world where evil triumphed a long time ago, where consciences have died out under the reign of money and where people spend their time hurting one another” -Pascal Laugier. “For all its brutality, Martyrs is conspicuously high minded, rooted in the centuries-old notion that spiritual transcendence lies just beyond the horizon of pain. Laugier’s twist: His ‘martyrs’ are conscripts, not volunteers” –Maitland McDonaugh.

There will be a Q&A with former Clevelander Erik Piepenberg, who writes about horror films for the New York Times.