The Kentucky Theatre began its second annual Twelve Lions Film Festival with a screening of “The First Omen” and a Q&A with its director, who grew up in Lexington.

The festival began on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 26 and featured 62 film screenings representing 22 countries with 15 of them being filmed in Kentucky.

The festival screened submitted films on Friday, Saturday and Sunday along with film workshops, all of which were free to the public.

“The First Omen” released in April 2024 and was directed by Arkasha Stevenson as her first feature film. While she wasn’t born in Lexington, Stevenson’s father lives in the city and she spent a lot of time growing up in Lexington.

“It makes me feel like I’m a little kid again being here in the Kentucky Theatre, it’s making me quite giggly,” Stevenson said.

As a child, Stevenson said she would visit the theater every Wednesday during the summer to watch movies.

“It was my first love, just going to the movies,” Stevenson said. “You can really feel the group energy around you. You laugh at things you wouldn’t normally laugh at and you’re scared of things you wouldn’t normally jump at.”

Before becoming a writer and director, Stevenson was a journalist and had previously studied at the University of Kentucky. As a UK student, she worked for the Kentucky Kernel as a photographer.

“I was always at the Kernel in the basement hanging out there being kind of a photo nerd,” Stevenson said. “I’m a really shy person and being a photographer was a way of exploring the world and getting to know people, especially people you’d never meet on a daily basis.”

As she moved around the country, Stevenson said she discovered her passion for horror and began pursuing film as a career.

She said her experience in journalism and photography played into how she thought about and approached film.

“I was very visually oriented … but also this is my way of talking to people,” Stevenson said. “Both of those skills translate to film.”

During the Q&A after the film screening, Stevenson answered questions from the audience ranging from technical decisions during filming to inspirations she took from other directors and the subject matter touched upon by her film.

Stevenson said the recent larger presence of female directors, particularly in horror, has highlighted women’s issues in a way that hasn’t been done before.

“There are so many women that are exploring horror in a really unique way … I think we’re at the beginning of something really, really good,” Stevenson said. “I think horror, especially body horror for women, is really personal, we’re in for a lot of really personal films.”

Speaking on “The First Omen,” Stevenson said the perspective of the main character in the movie was important to her and she used it as a major source of horror.

The film has multiple scenes depicting women’s bodies, one shot in particular Stevenson said had almost gotten the R-rated film an NC-17 rating, which would mean only people aged 18 and up would be allowed to see the film regardless of an adult being present.

“I think that we have been inundated with images of women only when they’re being maternal or when they’re being sexualized, it’s very rare that you see a female body that isn’t being sexualized,” Stevenson said. “I think that a lot of people don’t know what to do with that, that is horror to a lot of people.”

Director of the Kentucky Theatre Hayward Wilkirson said this is the second year the Twelve Lions Film Festival is being held; it began around the same time in Sept. 2023.

“We think that the theater and Lexington is ripe for a film festival … we think in 10 years this could be a film festival with a national reputation,” Wilkirson said.

The first year the festival was held it had about 100 submissions. This year’s festival saw about 800 submissions and more countries being represented, according to Wilkirson.

He said he expected to see an increasing number of filmmakers in Kentucky due to a tax incentive to support film.

“There are literally more than 11,000 film festivals in the world. In many cases you’re showing your film on a white wall in a hotel room somewhere,” Wilkirson said. “But in this case, as a young and emerging filmmaker, you have a chance to show your film in this beautiful 102-year-old historic theater.”

Chair of Friends of the Kentucky Theatre and co-chair of the festival Lisa Meek said the name of the festival came from an aspect of the theater’s architecture.

“Look over the doorways, there’s a frieze over the doorways and there are two lions over each of the six doors,” Meek said. “We thought it would be a good little mystery that would be easily solved but also a nice recognition of this theater’s historic architecture.”

Securing the opening screening for the festival was complicated according to Wilkirson, as the movie was distributed by 20th Century Studios, which is owned by Walt Disney Studios.

According to Wilkirson, theaters can only show either old releases or new films owned by Disney due to company rule.

The director’s father had reached out to him about screening the movie, and because the director would be there in person, Wilkirson said he was able to negotiate and was allowed to screen the movie.

“It was a bit of luck, really,” Wilkirson said.