Calgary Underground Film Festival Unveils 2015 Lineup

With its Oil barons and gleaming skyscrapers, Calgary, Alberta might be a lot like Canada's Houston, but between April 13th to 19th it'll be a heck of a lot more like Austin or Park City as their 12th annual Underground Film Festival (CUFF) takes to the Globe Cinema.

This year's slate includes a number of big hits from Sundance and SXSW, a slew of classics, and a retrospective of films from the king of Canada's genre cinema, David Cronenberg.

It will be a change for local audiences to see a wide variety of films, from Alex Garland's Ex Machina, the sci-fi thriller from the 28 Days Later scribe, to Joshua Oppenheimer's immensely moving The Look of Silence, a companion film to The Act of Killing.

International premieres also include the likes of Blood Sucking Bastards by Brian James O'Connell, Charle Hood's dramedy Night Owl, adn the rockdoc about those eyeball heads, Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents.

Special guests include old-school wrestler Jake "The Snake" Roberts, the subject of a doc that will be making its Canadian debut. Cinematographer Mark Irwin will talk about working with Cronenberg as part of the retrospective. The filmmaker veteran lensed the early films of DC including The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome and Deadzone, as well as films ranging from Scream to Dumb and Dumber.

There's also the International premiere of I Am Thor, telling the tale of the muscle bound rocker's rise to fame, with the big man himself showing up to talk about the film.

From South Korean crime thrillers like A Hard Day to Al Pacino staring in David Gordon Green's Manglehorn, the selection looks suitably eclectic and interesting.

You can find the entire selection of films here on the CUFF official site.