Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival kicked off its 30th edition on Thursday, with a program celebrating local and international genre filmmaking through groundbreaking works from established directors and emerging local talent.
Running until Aug. 2, the festival’s lineup includes over 125 features and 200 shorts, with screenings, events and workshops held at Concordia University’s Hall Building and J.A. DeSève cinemas, as well as select showings and activities at Montreal’s Cinéma du Musée.
Organizers say that this year’s lineup is the biggest they’ve ever had, with an anticipated 80,000 attendees throughout the festival’s nearly three week run.
Premieres, features and achievement award winners
Opening this year’s edition is the Canadian premiere of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell, a sensorial and transgressive film starring Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets), Havana Rose Liu (Bottoms) and Charles Melton (May December, Riverdale).
Prior to the screening, the Danish director received a Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award for his transformative body of work, which includes the film trilogy Pusher (1996-2005) and the 2011 action drama Drive.
Calling the award a “great honour,” Refn says it is means a lot for him to support a festival with a focus on uplifting genre filmmaking.
“Genre cinema is the foundation of cinema, we have to remember that. The more that we can continue to create in genres, the larger the world gets, and for me, it’s the only real cinema.”
Beyond his filmmaking prowess, artistic director and director of international programming for Fantasia Mitch Davis says it was important for the festival to recognize Refn’s work as an archivist and preservationist.
“He’s used the visibility that he has in his fame to elevate otherwise neglected and marginalized filmmakers, to do incredible restoration work for filmmakers like Mario Bava, and to have them celebrated by audiences who never paid attention to them before.”
Japanese director Takashi Shimizu is also set to receive a Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award for his continuing contribution to the horror genre, with the World Premiere of Village of Eight Gravestones and the North American Premiere of The Mouths, his two most recent projects, both being prominent features at this year’s festival.
Other notable screenings include Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Bob Colaers’ Attack on Paradise and the closing film, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s Freaks Part II.
Beyond the screen
The longstanding showcase Fantasia Retro returns to the festival this year, allowing attendees to watch an assortment of classic film restorations and rare 35mm projections, including works from Takashi Miike, Paul Morrissey and Marcela Fernández Violante.
Going further than film screenings, 30th anniversary celebration events include a sold-out masterclass with Refn at Cinéma du Musée, a panel featuring Schoenbrun in conversation with Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) and guests, as well as a talk between Canadian Screen Award winners Matt Johnson (Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie) and Grace Glowicki (Honey Bunch).
Despite the number of renown actors and filmmakers making their way down to Montreal for the occasion, deputy director and director of Quebec programming for Fantasia Tania Morisette says that the best part of the festival remains the same year after year.
“Our audience is the best thing about the festival. We always have new people discovering us every year, but also we have people that have been here since 1996 and they come back every year and they bring their kids and they bring their friends.”
Now a pillar of Montreal’s cinematic landscape, many local filmmakers, like Keiran Arscott, dream of one day having their project be selected by the festival. With his science-fiction short Nominal set to premiere at Fantasia on July 25, Arscott says it means the world to him to screen his film for the first time in the city.
“It means a lot because I’m originally from Quebec, so to be able to make a film that gets premiered at the biggest genre film festival in the world almost, it means a lot to do that in Quebec.”
A 30th birthday for the ages
With a collection of films spanning horror, science-fiction, action, fantasy, and more, the festival continues to cement its place in the world of international genre filmmaking through its competitions and boundary pushing programming.
This year, Fantasia’s flagship juried competition Cheval Noir includes two Canadian titles—Freaks Part II and Wiebke Von Carolsfeld’s Someone’s Daughter—as well as 12 other boundary-pushing international features.
Other notable competitions include the New Flesh Competition for Best First Feature and the International Short Film Competition, both showcasing and celebrating works from the next generation of genre filmmakers.
To keep the festivities going, the Cinémathèque québécoise, in collaboration with the festival, will present Fantasia: 30 Years of Exhilaration from Aug. 7 to Sept. 19, a retrospective screening series showcasing a mix of works from Fantasia’s history.
Tickets for the festival can be purchased in-person at the Fantasia Boc Office on Blvd. De Maisonneuve O. and online.
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