Another Filipino film was recognized at an international film festival, proving that locally made films can impress global audiences.

The horror film Deleter bagged the Best Scare Award at the Grimmfest 2023 in Manchester, United Kingdom, on 31 October.

Recognized as one of the best horror and genre film festivals in the world, Grimmfest considers the award as a highly contested category because the judges deliberate among themselves whether a "traditional" or a "more intangible" jump scare is a more frightening aspect in horror films.

However, according to Grimmfest, the 2022 MMFF horror film has "the eerie, unsettling mood and atmosphere," which prompted the jurors to choose the film for the highly coveted award.

Deleter director Mikhail Red shared the good news on his Facebook page: "DELETER wins the BEST SCARE award at Grimmfest 2023!"

Deleter is a techno-horror film about a desensitized online content moderator named Lyra (played by Nadine Lustre), who is hiding a deeper and darker trauma beneath all the gruesome imagery and graphic content she has to face daily.

Debuting at the 2022 Metro Manila Film Festival, the film bagged multiple awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Red, Best Actress for Lustre, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Editing and Best Visual Effects. Aside from bringing home multiple awards, it was the film festival's highest-grossing movie that year.

The film, which garnered eight nominations at the FAMAS Awards, also received nods at the recently announced 46th Gawad Urian Awards. It earned five nominations, including Best Director for Red, Best Actress for Lustre, Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Sound.

Red is a 31-year-old filmmaker who is best recognized for the films Birdshot (2016), Eerie (2019) and Dead Kids (2019), which was the first ever Netflix original film from the Philippines. With the success of Deleter, Red is working once again with Lustre with the folk-horror film Nokturno.

Grimmfest is an annual international film festival that premieres the "very best new horror and genre films from around the world" by both new and established filmmakers.