This Tennis Academy Has a Seriously Disturbing Admission Policy
Bloody Tennis is a body-horror thriller from writer-director Nikias Chryssos, the filmmaker behind The Bunker and A Pure Place, which follows 16-year-old Sophie, who earns a place at an elite tennis academy in southern Europe, only to discover that the brutal competition between its young players is hiding something considerably more sinister.
Sophie wants to become one of the best players in the world, but the academy's obsession with winning comes with a price, and as students begin disappearing, she starts uncovering the dark secret behind the institution and has to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice for success.
Nikias Chryssos Serves Up Something Completely Different
Bloody Tennis marks Chryssos' first English-language feature, following his German horror films The Bunker and A Pure Place. He also co-directed the 2025 film Rave On with Viktor Jakovleski, where the director has apparently been interested in the unlikely combination of tennis and boarding-school culture, using the isolated academy as a miniature society where competition can become increasingly extreme.
Danish actress Sandra Guldberg Kampp plays Sophie, with the international cast including Helena Zengel, Elina Löwensohn, Tracy Gotoas, Lily Taïeb, Lucie Zhang, Juliana Vieira-Guerra, Vincent Roméo and Zlatko Burić.
Kampp previously appeared in Wildland and Foundation, while Zengel is known internationally for News of the World and System Crasher. Löwensohn has a particularly strong genre pedigree, having appeared in films including Schindler's List, She Is Conann and A Pure Place.
Burić should also be familiar to anyone who watched Triangle of Sadness, while Jim Williams provides the score after previously composing music for films including Titane, Raw and Possessor.
Filming Took Place in Spain and Germany
Despite being a German production, Bloody Tennis was filmed primarily in Gran Canaria, Spain, with additional shooting in Cologne, where Constantin Campean served as cinematographer, while Anselm Koneffke edited the film after previously collaborating with Chryssos on Rave On, and production design comes from Merlin Ortner.
Bloody Tennis had its world premiere at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival, screening out of competition as part of the festival's 60th edition, and that festival launch was followed by a significant piece of distribution news - Shudder acquired the film for North America ahead of its premiere, with a release date of September 25th.
Trailer
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