Jamaican folklore is set to take a prominent step onto the international film stage with Duppy, a Jamaica-set supernatural horror feature from London-based Jamaican filmmaker Ajuán Isaac-George, selected for the 2026 Frontières Platform at the Marché du Film in Cannes.
The project was chosen for the platform’s Proof of Concept presentation, where filmmakers showcase promising genre projects to international producers, financiers, distributors and other industry professionals. Duppy was one of just seven projects selected for the Proof of Concept section from 124 submissions, giving the Jamaican-British production an important opportunity to attract financing and international partnerships.
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Set in rural Jamaica in 1998, the film follows Rainbow, a lonely 12-year-old girl who is sent to live with her grandparents. Struggling with isolation and a difficult relationship with her strict religious grandmother, Rainbow summons a hostile spirit in an attempt to retaliate, only to find herself bound to a dangerous, shapeshifting supernatural being.
Rather than treating Jamaican folklore simply as a backdrop for a conventional horror story, Isaac-George is using the supernatural to explore deeper themes of grief, abandonment, loneliness and childhood emotion. The filmmaker has described Duppy as a culturally specific story that can nevertheless connect with audiences beyond Jamaica through its exploration of universal human experiences.
“Duppy is a culturally specific horror that transforms Jamaican folklore into a universal story about grief, loneliness, and the destructive power of childhood emotion,” Isaac-George told Variety.
The project is particularly notable because Jamaican myths, spirits and legends have had relatively little representation in international horror cinema despite the island’s enormous global cultural influence. Annick Mahnert, executive director of the Frontières Platform, noted the significance of bringing a Jamaican folklore-based project into the international genre-film space.
For Isaac-George, Duppy represents his move into feature filmmaking following recognition for his short-form work. His short film ** Snowfalls in the Summer ** premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in 2023 and screened at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival. His documentary short ** Seventeen ** premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in 2025.
The feature is being developed as a U.K.–Jamaica co-production, with My Accomplice producing in the United Kingdom and Jamaican company Mental Telepathy involved on the Jamaican side. Producers include Dorottya Székely, Aleksandra Bilić, Jamie Clark and Robert A. Maylor. The project has been in development since 2024 and was previously presented at Film London’s Production Finance Market in 2025.
The Frontières Platform is organized by the Fantasia International Film Festival in partnership with the Marché du Film, and is regarded as a major international meeting point for genre filmmakers seeking financing, production partners and distribution opportunities. The 2026 Proof of Concept presentation took place at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes on May 16, placing Duppy alongside a diverse collection of international horror and genre projects.
The Cannes selection could therefore prove significant well beyond the film itself. Duppy offers an opportunity for Jamaican folklore, particularly the longstanding cultural belief in duppies, spirits and supernatural forces, to move from oral tradition and local storytelling into a contemporary cinematic language capable of reaching audiences around the world.
It also signals growing space for Caribbean filmmakers to tell stories rooted in their own cultural traditions without having to strip away the local elements that make those stories distinctive.
For Jamaican cinema, Duppy represents more than another horror project. It is an attempt to place Jamaican mythology, landscape and cultural memory at the heart of an internationally marketable film, while demonstrating that stories born from Caribbean folklore can compete for attention on one of the world’s most influential film-industry stages.
