L'Etrange Festival 2017 teases first titles, full line-up to come

For more than two decades now, L'Etrange Festival in Paris became one of the most anticipated movie fest in Europe, side by side with other festivals such as SITGES, BIFFF, etc. This year's Etrange Festival will take place from 6th to 17th of september in Paris, and while waiting for the full line-up to be revealed in the upcoming weeks, a few titles have already been announced, traditionnally revealed by their long time partner 1kult.

Competition :

4 movies from the competition have been announced this far.

• Replace, first full-length feature of German director Norbert Keil, follows a young girl whose skin start to age rapidly, dry out and crumble away. She then realize she can replace her own skin with somebody else's.
• The wild boys : artist Bertrand Mandico first full-length movie focus on a group of five boys, taken on a repressive cruise on a haunted sailboat after committing a savage crime.
• Kuso, the Flying Lotus movie, seems to be one of a kind. Said to have gross-out the Sundance festival audience, the movie will confront its reputation.
• Mon Mon Mon Monsters : The tennant downstairs screenwriter, Giddens Ko, comes back with his new feature recently awarded with the audience price at Bucheon festival.

New talents :

Focusing on debuting director with a promising future, the New Talents section has revealed two names :

• Game of Death, from Sebastien Landry and Laurence "Baz" Morais, a canadian movie described as a mix of slasher, Jumanji and Natural Born Killers, is an adaptation of their web short serie.
• Spit'n Split, from Belgian director Jerome Wandewattyne, a mockumentary about a real band, The Experimental Tropic Blues Band", which also composed the soundtrack of the film.

MondoVision :

• The vilainess : Confession of Murder director Jung Byung-gil is back with this story of Chinese woman raised to kill whose new and peacefull life in South Korea will be interrupted by some revelations about her past. The movie received a standing ovation after it premiered in Cannes Film Festival.
• Meatball machine 2 : Yoshihiro Nishimura is back with this follow-up to his 2005 movie. Gory effects and crazyness are to be expected.

Documentaries :

• Liberation day, from Morten Traavik and Ugis Olte, follows the unexpected journey of an ex-Yugoslavian cult band, Laibach, that becomes the first band to perform in North Korea.
• So help me god (Ni juge ni soumise, litterally "Neither judge nor submissive"), directed by Yves Hinant and Jean Libon.

In addition to these 10 movies, it is confirmed that a special program will be dedicated to spanish director Alex de la Iglesia. In addition to the screening of some of his cult movies Perdita Durango and The day of the beast, his latest feature, The Bar, will be presented to the french audience. We have no clue yet tho if Alex de la Iglesia himself will come as a guest.

Last but not least, the festival will honor their colleague of Sitges, the spanish festival, who will turn 50 next october ! Five movies plus a short-film program will be screened in order to celebrate the birthday of one of the oldest movie festival in the world.

Finally, the festival will also welcome an artistic performance of Tom de Pekin, who designed the official poster of Alain Guiraudie's Stranger by the lake.

So, what are your thoughts on these first annoucements ?