Spirit of Independence Film Presents Inferno

In the shadowy corners of 1980s New York, a young music student named Mark journeys from Rome to the crumbling apartment of his sister Rose—only to find her missing under mysterious and increasingly surreal circumstances. Her last letters speak of dark forces, ancient secrets, and a malevolent presence dwelling beneath her building.

As Mark delves deeper, he uncovers a nightmarish architecture of terror—an esoteric puzzle spanning centuries and continents, built by an alchemist and guarded by the second of three immortal witches. Whispers of “The Mother of Darkness” haunt the hallways. Water seeps where it shouldn’t. Cats stare too long. And death, when it comes, is slow, dreamlike, and stained in rich reds and blues.

Released in 1980,Inferno is the rarely-seen middle chapter of Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy—an atmospheric fever dream of expressionist horror, where logic dissolves into nightmare and the occult permeates every shadow. With a score by Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer), and Argento at the peak of his operatic maximalism, this isn’t just a horror film—it’s a descent.

Presented here on it's 45th anniversary by the Spirit of Independence Film Festival.