Captured Souls International Premiere at Trieste Science+Fiction Festival
You Make the Films You Have to Make
When Chris Collier's Captured Souls: In Conversation with Graham Humphreys screened at the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival in late October 2025, the documentary filmmaker found himself in fitting company. The Italian festival's 25th anniversary edition celebrated the margins of genre cinema, and Collier's intimate portrait of the UK's most iconic horror illustrator belonged precisely there, among the festival's "Classix" programme alongside The Fly, District 9, and Peter Watkins' The War Game.
For Collier, the journey to Trieste represented more than just an international premiere; it was a milestone. It was validation of a philosophy that has guided his fifteen-year career: you make the films you have to make. Everything else is secondary.
It's a question that often arises when discussing his work. Why make documentaries about poster artists, obsessive film cataloguers, and genre festivals? Why pursue subjects that might be considered niche, even within the already specialised world of documentary filmmaking? The answer, for Collier, is deceptively simple: because these are the stories that demand to be told.
"I make the films I have to make," Collier explained when asked about his choice of subjects. "Everything else is secondary to that."
It's a statement that could sound dismissive, but in practice, it reflects a deeply considered approach to documentary work. Each film in what has become known as Collier's "trilogy exploring stories from the edge of cinema" FrightFest: Beneath the Dark Heart of Cinema (2018), Title (Year) Director. Place (2023) and now Captured Souls focus on individuals driven by similar compulsions, as Graham Humphreys paints poster after poster with gouache and brushes. Alan Goble is cataloguing every film ever made. The four unlikely partners who built FrightFest from nothing. These are people, like Collier himself, who have no choice but to pursue their obsessions.
At Trieste, Captured Souls found its audience. These festival-goers understood Graham Humphreys' contribution to genre cinema, who recognised the Evil Dead and Nightmare on Elm Street posters that defined an era, and who appreciated that Humphreys himself had created the festival's 2022 poster. The screening, held at Teatro Miela on the morning of October 30th, brought together precisely the community the film was made for: people who understand that creativity in the margins matters, that the unsung contributors to cinema history deserve their moment of recognition.
This is the paradox of making "niche" films: they only appear niche until you find their community. What seems specialised to outsiders becomes essential to those who live within that world. Collier's films don't try to explain why anyone should care about poster art or film cataloguing—they bear witness to the people who have devoted their lives to these pursuits, trusting that the humanity revealed through intimate observation will speak for itself.
Following its UK premiere at FrightFest in August 2025 and its international premiere at Trieste, Captured Souls is currently screening at festivals including Manchester Festival of Fantastic Film. Each screening finds the film's natural audience: genre fans, film historians, artists, and anyone who has ever pursued an obsession despite its apparent impracticality.