Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 Preview
The 27th Fantasia International Film Festival is primed with a mouthwatering collection of some of the most eclectic filmmakers and eagerly awaited world premieres on the planet. The People’s Movies will be on hand to catch the new cult classics and festival breakouts as they happen.
The Festival will be celebrating its 27th edition with a whiplashing program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 20 through August 9, 2023, taking place at the Concordia Hall Cinema, with additional screens at the Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée.
This year Fantasia has collaborated with the Korean Cultural Center to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic relations between Canada and the Republic of Korea in order to showcase this unique national cinema. Featuring both current works and a scintillating retrospective to further cement the festival’s love affair with South Korean movies.
Fantasia is also giving their 2023 Canadian Trailblazer Award to the legendary underground filmmaker, Larry Kent, with World Premieres of Canadian International Pictures’ new 4K restorations of his landmark Vancouver Trilogy and additional screenings and events.
Larry is a filmmaker I have had personal interactions with and he is indeed a wonderfully humble and kind human. His film She Who Must Burn (2015) remains one of my favourite genre films of recent times and it is great to see his superb body of work gain the recognition and exposure it deserves.
Fantasia has gone from strength to strength since its inception in 1996 and this year’s super-strong lineup is no exception. Below are just some of the movies being showcased that fans of fantastic cinema should place firmly on their radar.
WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS
The Adams family comes back to their spiritual festival home with the final part of their trilogy concerned with the complexities of family dynamics. Their previous films The Deeper You Dig and Hellbender became darlings of the festival scene as did the family themselves with their easygoing personalities and boundlessly enthusiastic approach to the creative process.
This time around they tell the twisted tale of a family of sideshow artists as they travel the world during the death knell of the carnival circuit.
John Adams was kind enough to give us a few clues about what we can expect ahead of its eagerly awaited world premiere at Fantasia 2023.
” We absolutely love Mitch Davis and the entire Fantasia crew. This is our third world premiere at Fantasia, and for us, it’s always the highest honor to be included in their program because they truly are a beacon of independent cinema”.
“We feel WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS is our most beautiful and yet our most brutal, both emotionally and visually. We loved making this film and truly enjoyed bringing this family’s haunting demons to life”.
One of the most striking elements of their work is the ability to shift tonally without derailing the trajectory of the narrative or compromising its themes. So what can we expect from the new film?
“The tone of this film is mystical and dark, all the while celebrating the love that even the blackest hearts hold. We aimed to paint a world that captured the slippery, strange, and moody ambiance of a nightmare. Setting the film around a dying carnival circuit in Depression Era America informed our vision of fading, desperate characters in a bleak and desolate world, while also allowing us to sprinkle that world with romance, humor and violence”.
A superb past record and an irrepressible ion for genuinely independent cinema make Where The Devil Roams one of the must-catch movies of the festival.
MAYHEM!
Xavier Gens is among the most uncompromising auteurs of his generation with an outrageous penchant for mega-violence. His devastating Frontière(s) remains one of the most brutal and intellectually savage movies of all time.
His latest offering MAYHEM! has its world premiers at Fantasia 2023 and looks set to up the ante in onscreen ferocity.
The film concerns an ex-con boxer who ignores his parole conditions and hides away on an island in Thailand to start a new life and family. However, he is blackmailed by ruthless hoodlums and his life is once again thrown into a viper’s pit of bloody chaos.
MAYHEM! is described as starting “slow and seething” but you can bet your action movie ass that it will end up in jaw-dropping carnage. The action design department is stuffed to the brim with a wealth of talent boasting credits that include; John Wick: Chapter 4, The Matrix Resurrections, No Time To Die, and Gareth Evans’ Havoc.
WHAT YOU WISH FOR
A chef desperate to evade his gambling addiction assumes the identity of an old acquaintance in Latin America.
Those familiar with director Nicholas Tomnay’s first film The Perfect Host will know he is skilled in eliciting fine performances from his actors and has a wily twist or two in his locker. 13 years later he returns with the world premiere of What You Wish For a film that promises “A Hitchockian, edge-of-your-seat descent into moral compromise with generous servings of dark humour, shock, and surprise”.
Featuring an intriguing cast including Nick Stahl ( Hunter Hunter), Tamsin Topolski (Penny Dreadful), and Randy Vasquez (In the Defense Against Tyranny) this gripping depiction of greed comes from the producers of The Florida Project and could be one of the breakout hits of the festival season.
TALK TO ME
This much-lauded Australian supernatural thriller from Danny and Michael Philippou is the buzz horror flick of 2023 so far.
Influenced by genre heavyweights The Babadook and The Exorcist it explores the terrifying consequences of using an embalmed hand to conjure spirits.
Intensely scary with nuanced characters and a highly original premise Talk To Me is nailed on to be a crowd-pleasing blast at Fantasia and beyond.
LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP
Theresa Sutherland’s directorial debut is the next logical step in an impressive career trajectory. Having written the atmospheric indie horror flick THE WIND she further cut her teeth in the writing rooms of Mike Flanagan’s superb MIDNIGHT MASS.
The film, whose title appears to reference a famous Robert Frost poem, follows the fortunes of a park ranger who abuses her position to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her kid sister.
Horror fans will be thrilled to see the reappearance of Georgina Campbell fresh from the smash hit BARBARIAN ahead of what should be a defining role in Ishana Night Shaymalan’s directorial debut THE WATCHERS alongside Toni Colette.
Inspired by the false security of childhood camping trips and real-life conspiracy theories surrounding national park disappearances LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP should see Sutherland safely ensconced in the higher echelons of genre filmmaking.
APORIA
The multi-talented Judy Greer, much beloved to many for her voice role as Cheryl Tunt in the animated series ARCHER, is set to storm the festival circuit with this compelling genre-bender.
Directed by the award-winning Jared Moshe, who is stepping outside of his “Westerns” comfort zone, APORIA promises to be as emotionally connective as it is mind-bending in tackling time travel from an ethical perspective.
The film follows a heartbroken widow given the chance to resurrect her broken life by an ex-physicist who has built a time-distorting machine.
Fans of character-driven intelligent Sci-Fi should seek out this high-pedigree film enjoying its world bow at Fantasia 2023.
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