Even before I began contributing to this site in 2005, I heard about Fantasia International Film Festival. Founded in Montreal, Canada, in 1996, the sprawling festival is the grandfather of all genre-film festivals in North American, and has unleashed untold joy into the entire movie-loving world.
My editorial colleague and True Canadian Andrew Mack has been positively giddy with excitement about the festival's return to in-person screenings, which he has been documenting in a series of articles that I trust you've been reading as they've been published over the past couple months. This year's event gets underway Thursday, July 14.
Some of our sterling editors and faithful contributing writers will be attending in person this year, including Kurt Halfyard and J Hurtado, who have kindly shared their thoughts on the films that they are mostly highly anticipating. You can enjoy their comments by clicking through the gallery below.
Polaris
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Set a film in the snow, and I am there. Set it in a post-apocalyptic winter wasteland with action set-pieces, and I am there with frickin’ bells on.
Kirsten Carthew’s Polaris is Fantasia’s opening night film this year, shot and set in Canada’s Yukon, with an intense young star, Korean-Canadian Viva Lee. Also: Polar Bear.
-- Kurt Halfyard
Lynch/Oz
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For about a dozen years, Alexandre O. Philippe has been making feature length documentaries examining pop-cinema history, from Star Wars toxic fandom, to zombie culture, and the shower sequence in Psycho.
Here he turns his lens on David Lynch, and in particular the surrealist master’s love of the Technicolor classic The Wizard of Oz and how it functions as a thru-line across the auteur’s body of work.
-- Kurt Halfyard
Hard Boiled + John Woo in Person
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John Woo is receiving Fantasia’s Life-time Achievement award, and the festival is screening several of his ‘Heroic Bloodshed’ action classics, including the biggest, baddest actioner of them all, Hard Boiled.
Few can do a shoot-em-up set-piece like John Woo, and seeing these bullet ballets on the big screen with an enthusiastic Fantasia audience is a real treat. Getting to chat about it afterwards with the master himself, who is coming to Montreal to accept his Dark Horse statue in person, is a rare gift.
-- Kurt Halfyard
Detective vs. Sleuth
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Jonnie To’s regular collaborator, often functioning as writer, producer, and even co-director, Wai Ka-Fai takes another go-round with the ‘unstable detective’ story he perfected with 2007’s Mad Detective.
This glossy new blockbuster just scored big in China with a hefty box-office return. It also reunites the director with leading man Lau Ching-Wan.
-- Kurt Halfyard
Mercenaries from Hong Kong
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You may or may not know the “CARDINAL RULE” of Fantasia, but I will let you in on the secret: Never skip King Wei Chu’s presentation of a classic Shaw Brothers film screened for the local audience.
This year, it is uber-producer/writer/director Wong Jing’s 1982 low-brow action spectacular Mercenaries from Hong Kong, which breaks out of the usual SB back-lot, and goes full on location shoot in Cambodia.
-- Kurt Halfyard
One and Four
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A snowbound Tibetan neo-western! Say no more! All in.
Jingme Trinley’s debut feature, according to Fantasia’s programmer notes, also has subtle dashes of mysticism and possibly an unreliable narrator stricken with a bit of the old cabin fever.
-- Kurt Halfyard
Moloch
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A folk eco-horror entry from The Netherlands that features endless bogs, occult forces, and other staples of the subgenre. This type of genre film is a rarity from Holland, so I am curious what director Nico van den Brink has up his sleeve.
-- Kurt Halfyard
Dark Nature
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The debut feature from Métis director Berkley Brady mixes psycho-therapy, survival horror, and what appears to be a dank, stark Canadian wilderness when an isolated therapy retreat goes off the rails.
-- Kurt Halfyard
We Might As Well Be Dead
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A Romanian/German take on the High-Rise / Shivers subgenre of the ugliness of overly insular communities? Yes, please!
I love these types of films because they focus on the intimate spaces of eccentric and often controlling kooks who have lost all touch with the outside world due to gated social structures. The film is in Fantasia’s always challenging Camera Lucida Programme, which focuses on surreal and edgy forms of storytelling.
-- Kurt Halfyard
Relax, I'm From the Future
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Hot off a celebrated leading performance in Our Flag Means Death, underappreciated Kiwi comedy king Rhys Darby is a time-traveler sent to the past to save the world.
This debut feature from director Luke Higginson looks to be a fun time with a fun cast that also includes genre fave, Julian Richings (Anything for Jackson).
-- J Hurtado
The Roundup
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One of the biggest surprise hits out of Fantasia 2018 was Kang Yoon-Seong's The Outlaws, the story of a beefy detective, played with authority by Ma Dong-Seok (Don Lee), who thoroughly thrashes his way through a pair of Chinese-Korean gangs battling for turf.
Ma returns in this sequel that is already getting very positive advance word as a worthy successor, and to be honest, I'm really jonesing to watch him slap the crap out of bad guys for two hours. It's so cathartic.
-- J Hurtado
Speak No Evil
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An impressive shocker out of this year's Sundance Film Festival, this Danish cringe horror explores the consequences of politeness gone horribly awry. Two families meet for a joint vacation, but only one is really into it.
When the hosts start to show a dark side, their guests find themselves attempting to stay cool when things get exceedingly not cool very quickly. Sometimes you just have to say "no", or find yourself in a very bad situation.
-- J Hurtado
Popran
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The latest from One Cut of the Dead director Shinichiro Ueda finds a man in an unusual and unpleasant predicament. After being exceptionally rude to everyone around him, he wakes up one day to find himself without a dick.
Where has his dick gone? Well, he'd better find out in the next six days or it'll be gone for good.
-- J Hurtado
Dr. Lamb
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Fantasia is always a wealth of amazing repertory screenings and this year is no different. Among the classics playing during the festival is a new restoration of Billy Hin-Shing Tang & Danny Lee's Category III sleazefest, Dr. Lamb.
Simon Yam plays the titular doc/serial killer who has been abducting and dismembering young women. The film is sleazy, filthy, offensive, and good, clean fun for fans of Hong Kong's gruesome horror heyday.
-- J Hurtado
Dobaaraa
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Indian iconoclast Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur, Ugly) makes his Fantasia debut with his latest sci-fi feature, a remake of Spanish film Mirage. Taapsee Pannu plays a woman who wakes up one day living a life that isn't her own, including a missing child that no one seems to believe she ever had.
Her only clues come from a mystery VHS tape in the house that seems to be speaking to her from the past. Can she team of up with boy on her screen to save her sanity?
-- J Hurtado