The 2015 film selection from 24 countries will, aside feature films, feature eight documentaries, nine music documentaries and 28 short films, the festival's programme director Tomaž Horvat told the press last week.

The Vicious Cat competition for best feature film includes the German production "German Angst", German-American "Stung", Hungarian "Liza, a rokatunder" (Liza the Fox Fairy), and the Czech production "Ghoul".

Slovenia is represented with "Idyll", which is, according to the festival organisers, "a ground-breaking film for Slovenian genre scene".

The Melies d'Argent award conferred by the European Fantastic Film Festival Federation (EFFFF) meanwhile features a competition of 12 short fantastic films.

The EFFFF award is being given out at the Grossman festival since 2010.

The festival will also award best music documentary in the Noisy Cat category as well as the Slak's Vicious Cat award for best short film.

The Honorary Vicious Cat for life achievements at the festival will be given to acclaimed German actor Udo Kier, to whom a retrospective will be dedicated.

The list of names the festival organisers wish to confer the Honorary Vicious Cat, remains a long one, Horvat said on the topic.

"But you need to know that behind each honorary guest we bring to the festival hide years of correspondence, inviting, lobbying. We simply cannot afford paying them fees to attend the festival," he added.

Another high guest expected is the legendary film music composer Simon Boswell, who will head the Vicious Cat award jury. A retrospective of his work will be screened to celebrate his thirty years in the business.

Meanwhile, the wine programme will select the best wine, which will get the Wine Champion Vicious Cat award. The accolade will be handed out by Czech expert Miroslav Majer.

On the sidelines of the festival, a series of concerts will be given, featuring Slovenian punk-rock legends Pankrti, grindcore band Dickless Tracy and others.

The festival will close on Saturday with its traditional zombie parade, which will feature monstrous creatures celebrating the nonsense of life and the joys of death.

It seems that the festival is getting increasingly well received among the locals that are not fans of horror fiction, Horvat also said, adding that the closing parade especially helped them demystify film monsters.

Horvat was also very happy to observe that the festival has become well rooted in the Europeand and world genre map.

"Certainly, we cannot attract films and authors with high fees, promotion campaigns or distribution channels but we are still known as a must-go-to," Horvat told the STA proudly.