Frontières 2026: Full Lineup Announcement

FULL LINEUP ANNOUNCEMENT

 

After successful stops at the European Film Market and the Marché du Film – Festival de Cannes, Frontières is heading back to the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montréal for the 15th anniversary edition of its co-production market, taking place July 22–25, 2026.

 

We are thrilled to unveil the complete lineup of 34 projects selected to pitch at this year's market. Bringing together both familiar faces and exciting new voices, the selection showcases an eclectic range of stories spanning dark comedy, science fiction, folk horror, fantasy, psychological thrillers, and much more. From the strange and unsettling to the wildly imaginative, this year's lineup promises a glimpse into the future of genre cinema.

 

Past Frontières projects include In Flames, Hatching, Lamb, A Prayer for the Dying, Sea Fever, Vivarium, and Raw.

 

The Frontières Co-Production Market is funded by Telefilm Canada, SODEC, Rendez-Vous Canada, the Government of Quebec, the City of Montreal, Buma Music in Motion and the Netherlands Film Fund.

 

 

 

FRONTIÈRES MARKET

 

OFFICIAL SELECTION

 

ANY MEANS NECESSARY  (Canada)

Director: George Mihalka

Producer: Susan Curran, Dave Alexander, Matt. MacLellan, Francine DiBacco

Genre: Documentary

The outrageous true story of the renegade company Cinépix that built Canadian cinema, launched global filmmakers, and rewrote the rules of independent film.

 

AURORA COMES HOME  (Canada)

Director: Gloria Mercer

Producers: Shawn Angelski, Martin Fisher

Genre: Science Fiction, Thriller

In rural Northern Canada, a family unravels after the sudden and mysterious disappearance of their daughter, and the subsequent arrival of an eerily familiar woman eighteen months later.

 

BIRTH (Estonia)

Director: Oskar Lehemaa

Producer: Evelin Penttilä

Genre: Body Horror

Emma and Carl travel to a fertility ritual deep in the woods where an occultist family's hidden agenda pulls them into a brutal fight for survival.

 

CHER (Thailand)

Director: Songsak Mongkolthong

Producers: Rachvin Narula, Kulthep Narula and Hans Audric B.Estialbo

Genre: Action, Horror

A vine-entangled corpse calls a police officer to a mining camp on forbidden forestland, where his estranged brother and a mysterious woman awaken buried sins, and unleash a deadly forest horror.

 

COLD FEET (Czech Republic, France, Poland, India)

Director: Apoorva Satish

Producer: Michal Sikora

Genre: Romantic Zombie Comedy

On the day Jacob and Mia try to unite their vastly different families at their Czech–Indian wedding, their tradition-hungry guests unexpectedly begin transforming into flesh-eating monsters. To make it out alive, the couple must keep choosing each other, even as everyone tries to tear them apart, literally.

 

DELIVERY  (Mexico)

Director: Isaac Ezban

Producers: Natalia Contreras, Alejandra Cardenas, Felicitas Arce, Isaac Ezban

Genre: Science Fiction, Road Movie

A lonely trucker meets an abandoned girl in a border town. Fate, or something more sinister, will set them on an unexpected road trip, with devastating consequences. An original Isaac Ezban picture, inspired by the voice notes in WhatsApp.

 

GRANDMONSTER (Norway)

Director: Vegard Dahle

Producer: Jon Vatne

Genre: Zombie Comedy

While trying to save her grandmother from dementia, an American dropout triggers a zombie outbreak at a remote Norwegian nursing home. Turns out zombies with hip dysplasia and dentures are the easy part. Budget cuts, bureaucracy and Scandinavian conflict aversion are another story.

 

(GRO)CERIES (United Kingdom)

Director: Sophie King

Producers: Rosanna Eden-Ellis, Catherine Joy White

Genre: Horror, Comedy

A woman raised by vampires discovers she's something far worse: human. Her desperate attempt to transform and be like her family unleashes a blood-soaked reckoning over who she really is.

 

HUMPTY: AMERICAN DREAM (Canada, USA)

Director: Maxwell Nalevansky

Producer: Taylor Nodrick

Genre: Comedy, Fantasy

To save his kidnapped wizard father, a strange singing egg-man leaves his enchanted forest and ventures into the plague-ridden Kingdom of Orange County, where the American dream might just cost him everything.

 

INJURED RESERVE (Canada)

Director: Tyler Mckenzie Evans

Producers: Malachi Ellis, Claire Desmarais

Genre: Psychological Sports Thriller

A Black basketball prodigy struggles to preserve her sanity upon suffering a career-threatening injury shortly after a mysterious new player joins her team.

 

MY MISSING HALF  (Philippines, Japan)

Director: Rodiell Veloso

Producers: Tomomi Furuyama, Rajiv Idnani

Genre: Black Comedy, Horror, Road Movie

When a runaway manananggal desperate to live as a human loses her lower half, she sets out on an existential road trip with a hung-up ex, a Catholic priest ghost, a wandering Japanese spirit, and a drag queen to recover it. Along the way, she realizes becoming whole means embracing the monster she has spent her life trying to hide.

 

RING LEADER  (USA, Canada)

Director: Jason Lapeyre

Producers: Vanessa Marano, Laura Marano, Ellen Marano, Jason Lapeyre

Genre: Horror, Comedy

A codependent and unstable bridesmaid attends her best friend’s remote bachelorette party expecting one last weekend of bonding, only to find herself in a claustrophobic social death match where toxic friendship and bridal performance devolve into carnage.

 

THE FALL  (USA, France)

Director: Alexandre O. Philippe

Producers: Terri Piñon, Laurent Alary, Eric Jarno

Genre: Documentary

In a 57-frame close-up of Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) during the climax of Vertigo, Judy (Kim Novak) seemingly falls to her death - yet Alfred Hitchcock never shows us how. Haunted by this missing moment, filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe launches a global, deeply personal investigation to uncover not only what might have happened, but why the mystery was designed to endure.

 

THE GREAT CANADA DAY MASSACRE (Canada, QC)

Director: Elza Kephart

Producers: Marcel Giroux, Rebecca Rowley

Genre: Slasher Satire

Back home to sabotage Canada Day, a determined climate activist uncovers a plot to sell the town’s beloved forest and a killer targeting the culprits, including her own mother!

 

THE MIRE (Finland, Norway, Sweden, Latvia)

Director: Marika Harjusaari

Producers: Mika Ritalahti, Nima Yousefi, Einar Loftesnes, Gints Grübe

Genre: Folk Horror

In a remote 1800s Finnish village, a milkmaid secretly delivering unwanted infants to their deaths finds herself torn between old-world rituals and newfound faith when a reformist priest arrives—and something beneath the surface of the mire begins to fight back.

 

THEY (United Kingdom)

Director: Faye Jackson

Producer: Carley Armstrong

Genre: Cult Conspiracy Horror

After renting a room to a conspiracy theorist, a skeptical gardener begins to fear he might be right as the dead colonize her home, demanding her submission to an ancient cult.

 

THIRD WHEEL (South Africa, The Netherlands)

Director: Zoe Ramushu

Producers: Ellen Havenith, Reabetswe Moeti-Vogt

Genre: Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Drama

People pleaser Thina who was adopted by a white family, must confront the ghosts of her traumatic past at her seemingly joyful pre-wedding retreat which spirals into a nightmare of paranoia, deadly secrets and disappearances.

 

VIOLENT DELIGHTS (United States)

Director: Jack Warren

Producers: Ariel Adler, Brock Bodell, Jacob Brodsky, Andrew Duensing, Josh Duensing, Beatrix Herriott O'Gorman

Genre: Horror Romance

A trans boy and a cannibal girl fall in love and fight for survival against her homicidal family.

 

XX (The Netherlands)

Director: Nina Noël Raaijmakers

Producers: Fauve de Ruiter, Monique van Kessel

Genre: Body Horror

Up-and-coming scream queen Roxy undergoes an unauthorized uterus transplant after a freak accident on the set of a B-horror film. But everything changes when the uterus begins to rot in the tainted surroundings of the misogynistic film set and takes on a life of its own.

 

YOU WERE NEVER HERE (Austria, Canada)

Director: Johannes Grenzfurthner

Producers: David Hiatt, Taylor Nodrick, Jasmin Bauer, Guenther Friesinger

Genre: Science Fiction

At a remote research facility, people from across human history briefly materialize every 4 minutes and 56 seconds -- forcing a team of scientists and officials to confront a phenomenon they can neither control nor explain.

 

 

THE GENRE FILM LAB

 

LOUP-GAROU (Canada - BC, QC)

Director: Nathalie Therriault

Producer: Nneka Croal

Genre: Folk Horror

In 1917 rural Québec, during the sacred season of Lent, two farmer’s wives navigate their long-hidden love as the community spirals into hysteria over a loup-garou killing sinful men.

 

SEVERED (Canada - BC)

Director: Lauren Marsden

Producer: Fabian Aspell Morales

Genre: Horror

A biracial teenager visiting her extended family in a Caribbean village discovers a severed colonial statue head that curses the community and the land with an unrelenting sickness, forcing her to confront the island’s haunted past before it destroys everything she loves.

 

STACY'S MOM (Canada - ON)

Director: Marushka Jessica Almeida

Producers: Rabiya Mansoor, Nisha Khan, Marushka Jessica Almeida

Genre: Horror, Comedy

When an alluring new neighbour turns out to be a literal succubus, a sexually repressed teenager must save her father’s soul, without getting seduced herself.

 

TO THE NORTH (Canada - BC)

Director: Jean Parsons

Producers: Sara Blake, Magali Gillon-Krizaj

Genre: Erotic Thriller, Survival

Francine is an isolated Yukon homesteader, trapped in a dead marriage at the ends of the earth. Each day is a new fight for survival as the ecosystem around her dies. When her husband goes missing, she finds a strange man passed out in the woods. The sudden presence of this mysterious outsider unleashes repressed desires and a growing fear that her new lover might be her husband’s killer.

 

WIFEY (Canada - ON)

Director: Cassidy Civiero

Producer: Mariel Sharp

Genre: Thriller, Horror

An artist on the cusp of transitioning female-to-male is seduced by a volatile man who is hellbent on forcing them into traditional gender roles through a non-consensual marriage.

 

 

MUSIC PITCHES

 

ERICA WONG PING LUN (Canada)

 

ETHAN LAWRENCE (Canada)

 

MICHIEL MARSMAN (The Netherlands)

 

RAPHAËL REED (Canada)

 

 

SHORTS TO FEATURES

 

ECHOES (Australia)

Director: Gemma Lee

Producer: Gemma Lee

Genre: Science Fiction

When a neuroscientist's brain-computer interface accidentally traps him in a loop of his dying wife's final months, he must decide whether the technology that promised to preserve her memory is the very thing preventing him from letting her go.

 

ETERNAL VALLEY (United Kingdom)

Director: Jasmine De Silva

Producer: Tuli Litvak

Genre: Dark Comedy, Body Horror

When the beloved teen beauty queen becomes more iconic in death, her jealous best friend pursues the ultimate makeover. It starts by wearing her dead friend's face.

 

NOODLES, OUR LOVE WAS INSTANT AND FOREVER (Philippines)

Director: Whammy Alcazaren

Producers: Alemberg Ang, Mara Ravelo Bernaldo

Genre: Apocalyptic Queer Rom-Com

In an alien-occupied world on the brink of collapse, three queer teens cling to the power of love as they come of age and confront the sustainability of their futures.

 

RESET (USA)

Director: Celine Tien and Jerry Hsu

Producer: Julien Soros

Genre: Science Fiction, Family Drama

In an automated future where the elderly are reset into children to remain economically useful, a young woman reluctantly embarks on a journey with her brother and newly reset mother—one that begins to break a cycle neither of them could escape alone.

 

SEA SPIRITS (USA, Jamaica)

Director: Edson Jean

Producers: Eugene Sun Park, Robert Maylor

Genre: Folk Horror

Amidst social and political upheaval, a guilt-ridden mother haunted by her daughter lost at sea refuses to leave the country in search of her ghost.