Festivals: Calgary Underground
Calgary Underground 2026 Review: CLAIRE'S HAT: THE UNMAKING OF A FILM
It seems strange to be writing a review for a film that is over 20 years old, about another film that few have seen. Given its rogue construction, and unorthodox structure and style, Claire’s Hat has been screened publicly...
Calgary Underground 2026 Review: BAGWORM, Visually Excoriates Modern Masculine Isolation
A man should have his house in order. Carroll’s house is most definitely not in order. He appears to be living in a burned out shell of a structure with the roof about to fall down on him. Seeing...
Calgary Underground 2026 Review: HANGASHORE, An Oblique Foggy Nightmare
When sailors or fishermen head out to sea, they do not wish to hear their family say goodbye out of a fear of not coming home. There is no whistling at sea, for fear of conjuring up a storm. Having...
Calgary Underground 2026 Review: LITTLE DOORS, A Tentative Dance Around Trust
“Things never got so bleak that I took up a hobby.” This sums up the world of Little Doors. The country is in a kind of ‘soft apocalypse’ where the big city may be on fire, and things are...
Calgary Underground 2026: Curtain Raiser
Growing considerably over the last five years, the Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) has been continuing its mission as a fan-focused festival. Simultaneously, it has steadily increased the number of Canadian and International talents converging on the city for 11...
THE BEARDED GIRL: Watch The Trailer Premiere For Jody Wilson's Drama Fantasy
The story of a bearded girl who is tired of being a freak.
The Calgary Underground Film Festival Announces Full Lineup for 23rd Edition
Western Canada's largest genre film festival, The Calgary Underground Film Festival (or CUFF), just dropped its entire lineup for the 23rd edition. Existing in a kind of liminal season where the city could be the piled under snow, or T-shirt...
Friday One Sheet: Calgary Underground Film Festival 2026
Western Canada's ever-expanding genre extravaganza, the Calgary Underground Film Festival (or CUFF for short) has put out its key art in anticipation of its April 16th launch. In keeping with its maximalist underground comix design ethos, and always using a...
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: BROKEN BIRD, A Beautiful And Muddled Provocation
We meet Sybil confidently applying for a new job as undertaker’s assistant with the sharpest of black bangs, and a fashion sense that is both vintage and arthouse-modern. She is a seasoned pro with several references, and a balm for...
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: TWO WOMEN, A Modern Remake of Quebec Sex Comedy
A tiny camera move during a scene at a Montreal Canadiens hockey game demonstrates what good direction can do: the storytelling happens via the camera itself, revealing the gag (which I will not) and surprising the audience with something possible...
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: EEPHUS, Where Baseball Contains Multitudes
Eephus, Carson Lund’s wonderful ode to small stakes baseball and gruff Americana, needs its odd title explained: The Eephus pitch is a throw that is so unnaturally slow that it confuses the batter. It makes him swing too early, or...
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: REVERIES: THE MIND PRISON, One Story Ends, Another Story Must Begin
You know that dream where you are running, to nowhere in particular, for no reason, and you trip, fall, and wake up? Reveries: The Mind Prison is the movie version of that dream. Only here, you are walking, and thus...
Calgary Underground 2025: Curtain Raiser
Part fan-festival, with quietly subversive programming, and a gateway to oddness and offbeat cinema for Canada’s mid-west, the Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) showcases a sampler of the highlights of indie, documentary and genre cinema from the festival circuit that...
Calgary Underground Film Festival Announces 22nd Edition Lineup and Events!
Like Calgary in April, you never quite know what you are going to get at the Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF). It could be sunny T-shirt weather one day, and a punishing snow storm the next, the Northern Lights peeking...
Friday One Sheet: Calgary Underground 2025
"Lowbrow maximalist illustrations brimming with thoughtful puns, juicy buns, and innuendo." This is how illustrator Hamburger Hands (aka Kyle Schneider) describes his work, here for the 22nd Calgary Underground Film Festival, and its key art. It is an ode to Underground Comix...
Friday One Sheet: IN A VIOLENT NATURE
This gritty poster for Chris Nash's original and disturbing slasher film was designed by The Boland Design Company, and unironically features the word "gnarly" in the top pull quote. When designing a poster for a slasher (or for that matter,...
Calgary Underground 2024 Review: CUCKOO, Delightfully Analog Sensory Overload
Two characters, having barely survived a traumatic and violent ordeal at a hospital, try to leave, only to find the doors locked. But wait, it is one of those situations where one door is locked but the other one works...
Friday One Sheet: THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY
This cream-coloured, coffee focused, exercise in minimalism and symbolism is for the tight, one location 'bag of money' suspense thriller The Last Stop in Yuma County. I have no idea why, but i wish more designers would put the title...
Calgary Underground 2024 Review: HUMANE, The Family That Slays Together Stays Together
Apocalypses in Canadian cinema tend to occur in slow motion, and have a subversive touch of quiet absurdity. The two undisputed classics of the genre are Don McKellar’s Last Night, and Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool. Caitlin Cronenberg aims for that lofty...
Calgary Underground 2024: Curtain Raiser
The Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) opens its 21st edition today, and runs until April 28th. Western Canada's largest showcase of genre film, offbeat documentaries, and industry events is housed in the two-screen (stacked on top of one another) Globe Cinema in the...
